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 assassination of prominent Tunisian secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid highlights the growing threat of militancy in the country. This threat has the potential to deepen the divide between the secular and Islamist factions within Tunisia and delay the transition to a permanent government. Meanwhile, the Islamist-led interim government in Tunis is attempting to More »

Positive civil and political youth activism has been the most rewarding result of the Yemeni uprising of 2011. Individual activism, youth initiatives and the participation of youth in new political parties have introduced fresh approaches and perspectives to Yemen’s civil and political arenas. This youth involvement is already changing the landscape in Yemen. For example, in More »

When declaring a state of emergency in the canal cities in response to clashes in Port Said last week, President Mohamed Morsi finally showed Egyptians his “bad cop” side after months of “good cop” rhetoric filled with invocations of “hugs” and “love.” What quickly became viral from the announcement was the clip of the More »

When the plane of deposed Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali touched down in Jeddah in January 2011, the Saudi monarchy’s worst nightmare re-emerged. Ben Ali was a close personal friend of then Saudi strongman, the late Saudi Crown Prince and longtime Interior Minister Naif bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. For the Saudi monarchs, seeing two More »

Remember in May 2011 when U.S. President Barack Obama told the government of Bahrain “you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail?” The people of Bahrain do, but many doubted a real dialogue would be possible. Since President Obama’s call for talks, there has been no real political More »

Tunisians just marked the second anniversary of the toppling of long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, an event which unleashed an entire wave of popular uprisings across the Arab world. Ben Ali’s ouster did pave the way to free elections and the formation of a new government in Tunisia, but it left millions of its More »

The recent second anniversary of the Egyptian revolution that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak was marred by renewed violence between protesters and security forces of the country’s new government under President Mohamed Morsi. Disillusioned with the direction taken by Egypt’s new Islamist leader, activists took to the streets again reportedly only to see a replay 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 »

The spate of violent incidents in Cairo and the Suez Canal cities of Port Said and Suez in the last week of January has highlighted the increasingly fractured state of Egyptian society and exposed the failings of key institutions, in particular the presidency, the judiciary and the forces of law and order. The president, Mohamed Morsi, More »

One of the primary demands of the 2011 Egyptian revolution was to end the three decades of emergency rule under President Hosni Mubarak. But two years later, President Mohamed Morsi has declared a state of emergency in three canal cities: Port Said, Suez, and Ismailya. The decision came three days after violence erupted on the 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 »

With the second anniversary of the Egyptian January 25 uprising having sparked renewed violence and the country having been once again pushed to the brink, there is a strong sense now that the hopes of Tahrir Square have been seriously tarnished. There’s some reason for this: There have been too many broken promises. Women, who 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 »

The Arab Spring introduced us to the strength and determination of the many Arab women who took to the streets and the Internet to call for change in their governments and societies. Gone were the stereotypes of oppression and passivity. In their place were voices and faces of hope, courage and indomitable spirit, calling More »

Two years after their historic uprising, many Egyptians, from intellectuals to the working class, are reflecting on what has been gained since the heady days on Tahrir Square and what still needs to be done. VOA’s Elizabeth Arrott reports from 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 »