Posts tagged : "Arab Spring"

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Who’s Profiting From the War on Yemen? Q&A with Hassan El-Tayyab

Who’s Profiting From the War on Yemen? Q&A with Hassan El-Tayyab

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Conflict in Yemen, one of the most impoverished nations on the face of the earth, is well into its sixth year. The United Nations has warned about the acuteness of the world’s biggest humanitarian emergency gripping the Arab country owing to a multisided fighting that has not yet subsided despite intervention by global powers and international organizations. The combined death toll from the conflict, hunger, diseases and lack of health facilities has surpassed 235,000 while nearly 20 million people, representing around 70 percent of the population, suffer from sever hunger, including 2 million children under five who are critically malnourished. University of Denver researchers estimate the ongoing war...

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Bahrain’s human rights record regressed rapidly in 2019: Sayed Yousif Al-Muhafdah

Bahrain’s human rights record regressed rapidly in 2019: Sayed Yousif Al-Muhafdah

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Bahrain has been in turmoil since 2011, when anti-government, pro-democracy protests swept across the island nation and were met with the government’s iron fist. The movement was mostly led by the Shia opposition of the Sunni-ruled kingdom, and put a spotlight on the rampant corruption and anti-democratic practices of the Bahraini government. Although the movement was nominally quashed in 2014, it had a significant ripple effect on the kingdom’s international credibility. In the recent years, Bahrain’s human rights record has been occasionally discussed by the media, academicians and human rights organizations, and critical observers raised valid questions as to the reasons why Bahrain’s major...

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Calling Assad the Milošević of the Middle East is Not Unreasonable

Calling Assad the Milošević of the Middle East is Not Unreasonable

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: In his latest interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in February 2017 in Munich, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif made it clear that he doesn’t agree with the description that the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is the “Milošević of the Middle East.” Slobodan Milošević was the first President of the Republic of Serbia charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with war crimes in connection to the wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. The Yugoslav politician finally died in his prison cell in The Hague in 2006 without being convicted. Now, a politician who is facing a whole load of similar accusations, including war crimes and...

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Stability has Replaced Democracy as a Popular Demand in Egypt: Q&A with Sarah Magdy

Stability has Replaced Democracy as a Popular Demand in Egypt: Q&A with Sarah Magdy

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: The March 2018 presidential election in Egypt decided that the incumbent Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will be in office for another four years. Many human rights groups, critics and journalists described the poll as “farcical,” saying that Sisi cannot be the true representation of Egyptian democracy. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had no serious rivals but only a mid-ranking politician who was himself a Sisi supporter. Moussa Moustafa Moussa was able to win no more than of 2.92% of the votes. The Civil Democratic Movement boycotted the election and there were allegations of electoral fraud. Nezar AlSayyad, an Egyptian historian and the former head of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the...

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There Are No Clear Winners in the Saudi War on Yemen: Prof. Charles Schmitz

There Are No Clear Winners in the Saudi War on Yemen: Prof. Charles Schmitz

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: When Saudi Arabia and a coalition of its regional partners embarked on a military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, it was hardly predictable that the war would drag on for more than a year and morph into a humanitarian crisis. The emergency is characterized by massive civilian casualties, displacement of citizens, nationwide water and fuel shortages and deepening poverty in the already-impoverished country. Saudi military engagement was a response to an uprising by the Shiite Houthis in northern Yemen trying to push the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi from power. In late March, UNICEF warned that some 320,000 Yemeni children faced the risk of life-threatening malnutrition, while 82% of...

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ISIS, An Important Wake-up Call about Arab World’s Problems and Deficiencies: Interview with Rami G. Khouri

ISIS, An Important Wake-up Call about Arab World’s Problems and Deficiencies: Interview with Rami G. Khouri

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) is referred to as the richest terrorist organization in the world. In 2015, it earned $2.4 billion through oil exports and illegal taxation and extortion from the desperate people living under its harrowing rule. Defeating the ISIS terrorists militarily appears to be a daunting task, and people hesitate to call the annihilation of ISIS an easily-reachable and plausible target, at least for the time being when the international community is divided on whom to support and whom to fight in Syria, and the influential actors pursue apparently conflicting interests. The latest estimates by the U.S. intelligence community put the number of ISIS recruits at 25,000,...

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Tensions Between Riyadh, Tehran Detrimental to Arab World: Prof. Madawi Al-Rasheed

Tensions Between Riyadh, Tehran Detrimental to Arab World: Prof. Madawi Al-Rasheed

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: More than a month ago, the Saudi government executed 47 prisoners in a day, sending strong tremors across the Middle East. The prisoners were claimed to be al-Qaeda affiliates and terrorists behind the killing of Saudi and foreign citizens between 2003 and 2006. Among those put to death row was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a noted Shiite cleric known for his outspoken advocacy of the rights of the underrepresented Shiite minority in the kingdom. The execution of Sheikh Nimr sparked tensions in the region, and ignited protests in Iran that culminated in a violent attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad. In response to the embassy rampage, Saudi Arabia severed its...

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Sectarian conflict eroding the crisis-hit Syria

Sectarian conflict eroding the crisis-hit Syria

Kourosh Ziabari - Press TV: It’s now three years that Syria has been engulfed in a destructive civil war which is leading nowhere but simply continues to claim the lives of innocent civilians falling prey to the greediness and voracity of imperial powers and those who intend to disintegrate Syria and disrupt the solidarity of its people. More than 130,000 Syrians have reportedly been killed and well over 2 million displaced in the ongoing clashes in the war-torn country since March 2011. The Western mainstream media persistently try to portray the violence in Syria as part of the wave of revolutionary movements in the Arab world that started from Tunisia three years ago known as the Arab Spring, but the irony is that there is...

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Interview with Vietnam War veteran S. Brian Willson

Interview with Vietnam War veteran S. Brian Willson

Kourosh Ziabari: Vietnam War veteran and renowned peace activist S. Brian Willson believes that the Arab states of the Persian Gulf are destabilizing Syria by sending arms and ammunitions to the rebels and Al-Qaeda fighters operating in the Arab country simply in order to gratify the United States and make sure that they will be never destabilized politically. “Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia either have US military bases or possess strategic resources desired by the US and the West. Perhaps many of the Arab nations want to be sufficiently supportive of the US and its desire to finish off Syria as the US did recently to Libya so as not to be so vulnerable themselves to being destabilized by the US,” said Brian...

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US Supports Terrorists When They Fight its Adversaries

US Supports Terrorists When They Fight its Adversaries

  Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: Syria has become a battlefield for the face-off between the forces of government, Al-Qaeda terrorists and foreign-backed mercenaries that are hell-bent on removing President Bashar al-Assad from power. So far, more than 100,000 Syrians have been killed in the civil war which has extricated the Arab country. After a chemical attack in the Ghouta district of Damascus killed around 1,400 people, as claimed by the United States, the White House announced that it intends to launch a “surgical”, “limited” military strike against Syria, and that the attack would certainly take place. It later postponed its plans after the Russian government presented a proposal that would demand Syria to...

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Governments Condemn War Crimes When it Serves their Interests

Governments Condemn War Crimes When it Serves their Interests

  Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: More than two years after the outburst of conflict and violence in Syria, the government of President Bashar al-Assad is being accused of killing its own citizens and using chemical weapons against the rebels. Although these claims haven’t been substantiated with credible evidence yet, the United States and its allies are ratcheting up their war rhetoric against Syria and lobbying to ensure a UN Security Council resolution that will permit them to launch limited, surgical attacks against Syria’s military and government sites and perhaps lead to the removal of President Assad from power. The crisis in Syria has embattled the country in a complicated and unusual situation which sounds...

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The United States doesn’t Recognize Syria’s Sovereignty

The United States doesn’t Recognize Syria’s Sovereignty

Kourosh Ziabari: The United States has seemingly lost the battleground in Syria by ashamedly retreating from its war threats against the Arab country; however, there are still extremist neo-conservatives in the US administration and the Congress who persistently call for a new costly military adventure in the Middle East. American author Douglas Valentine says that the United States does not abide by any of its international obligations and its calls for war against Syria violate the international law and the UN Charter. "The US has threatened about 50 nations with military attack. Warmongers on the Left and Right claim this right on the basis that America is an "exceptional" nation. That means the US has an exception to all laws. It is...

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