Former PMs asked princes to support bid for $5bn contract by Ayman Asfari’s firm Petrofac
Two former Conservative prime ministers lobbied a Middle Eastern royal family to award a multi-billion dollar oil contract to a company headed by a major Tory donor, the Guardian has established.
In March 2017, while in Downing Street, Theresa May wrote to the Bahraini prime minister to support the oil firm Petrofac while it was bidding to win the contract from the Gulf state.
Continue reading...Donald Trump spoke directly to the Turkish president, Tayyip Erdoğan, on Monday to demand an immediate ceasefire in Syria while announcing a series of punishments for Ankara that critics saw as an attempt to save face.
The US president’s conversation with Erdoğan was revealed by the vice-president, Mike Pence, who said he would soon be travelling to the Middle East. “The United States of America did not give a green light for Turkey to invade Syria,” Pence insisted to reporters at the White House.
Continue reading...With the US gone, the implications of their departure is beginning to sink in across the Middle East
The moment that changed the Middle East arrived with a sudden silence. Just before 7pm on Sunday, the internet was cut across north-eastern Syria where, for half an hour, the Kurds of the region had been digesting a news flash. The Syrian government was returning to two towns, Manbij and Kobane. The implication quickly sunk in.
The regional capital, Qamishli, soon emptied; streets that had bustled with minibuses and shoppers became eerie and still. With the internet down phones were no help and nor were officials who had vanished along with the traffic. Air seemed to be suddenly vacuumed from the city, and the few people still around knew exactly what it meant: this was the moment power changed hands. It was a time to be scared.
Continue reading...Children taken to safety in Raqqa after hundreds of people fled camp holding Islamic State affiliates in northern Syria
Three orphans believed to be British citizens have been evacuated from an area in northern Syria that was the focus of recent attacks by Turkish troops and their allies.
The Guardian understands that the three children, Amira, 10, her sister, Hiba, eight, and their brother, Hamza, were evacuated from a camp for people associated with Islamic State in Ain Issa on Sunday. They were part of a group of 24 children taken to safety by the UN refugee organisation.
Continue reading...Deal to support Kurds in exchange for key cities set to open new front in civil war
Syrian troops have begun sweeping into Kurdish-held territory on a collision course with Turkish forces and their allies, a day after the beleaguered Kurds agreed to hand over key cities to Damascus in exchange for protection.
The deal, which Kurdish leaders emphasised they had made reluctantly after four days of bombardment by Turkish artillery and jets, threatens to open a new front in Syria’s nearly nine-year civil war, and signals the likely end of US and European military deployments in the country’s north-east.
Continue reading...A close ally is abandoned, and Isis is regrouping. The speed of the unravelling is breathtaking
In the week since Donald Trump’s fateful phone conversation with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the US has entirely abandoned the Kurds, its most effective allies in the Middle East, and with them a Syria strategy that was five years in the making.
The Islamic State flag has been raised once more and the last vestige of US credibility as a reliable partner lies crushed under Turkish tank tracks. It has arguably been the worst seven days for US foreign policy since the invasion of Iraq.
Continue reading...Thousands take to streets after exit polls give conservative academic more than 70% of the vote
A low-profile, conservative law professor has beaten a charismatic media magnate released from prison last week in Tunisia’s presidential election runoff.
In a contest that reflected Tunisia’s shifting post-revolution political landscape, Kais Saied scooped more than 70% of the vote, according to two exit polls, more than 40 points ahead of Nabil Karoui.
Continue reading...After the latest atrocity by pro-Turkey forces, the long era of impunity may be near an end
Actual or suspected war crimes have been reported at every stage of Syria’s long-running civil war – and Turkey’s latest cross-border incursion has unleashed another wave of atrocities, including executions of civilians and other alleged crimes against humanity.
But despite huge amounts of documentary evidence collected since 2011 by the UN and independent human rights groups, the perpetrators of such crimes in Syria, whether they are governments, armed factions or individuals, have mostly escaped punishment. This has encouraged a sense of impunity among wrongdoers – and dismay among victims.
Continue reading...Agreement to hand over border towns comes after more than 700 Isis affiliates escape camp
More than 700 people with links to Islamic State have escaped from a detention camp in north-east Syria, as the Kurdish-led forces in control of the area reached a deal with the Assad regime to stave off a bloody five-day-old Turkish assault.
Kurdish fighters controlling the region would surrender the border towns of Manbij and Kobane to Damascus in a deal brokered by Russia, officials said on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Exit poll points to victory for low-profile law professor Kais Saied over fellow outsider Nabil Karoui
Tunisians are voting on Sunday in a runoff presidential election between a low-profile law professor and a charismatic media magnate who was released from prison earlier this week.
The Maghreb country, often held up as the lone success story of the Arab spring, appears set to successfully carry out its second-ever presidential elections, with an earlier round of voting winnowing the field from 26 candidates to the two self-styled outsiders, the lawyer Kais Saied and the businessman Nabil Karoui.
Continue reading...Jihadist group al-Shabaab suspected of placing roadside device
Several Kenyan police officers were killed on Saturday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb near the Somali border, authorities said.
“Unfortunately we lost some officers and the vehicle they were travelling in has been severely damaged,” said the Kenyan chief of police, Hilary Mutyambai, without giving an exact number of fatalities.
Continue reading...Rebels shot at least nine civilians in execution-style killings in Syria, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
Pro-Ankara fighters taking part in a Turkish offensive on Kurdish-held border towns in north-eastern Syria have killed at least nine civilians including a female politician, a human rights monitor has said.
“The nine civilians were executed at different moments south of the town of Tal Abyad,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Continue reading...In the Kurdish heartlands in Syria, the sense of abandonment at the withdrawal of US troops is palpable as Erdoğan’s forces claim early successes
The lone road out of Ras al-Ayn was empty, except for one overladen lorry that slowly made its way along a lethal mile from war zone to exile. Shells thudded into buildings in the distance as Kurdish forces in vans prepared to race jets and sniper fire, trying to get to a battle that almost everyone else had left.
Those who remained in the border town at the frontline of the war for north-eastern Syria were there to fight; the Kurds rallying to defend it and the Arabs preparing to seize it from them. Early on Saturday, the Arab force, trained by Turkey, made its move. By the day’s end, the proxies claimed to have recaptured part of Ras al-Ayn, making good on Ankara’s threats to push Kurdish forces from one of their main enclaves.
Continue reading...Turkey’s Syria invasion following US withdrawal of its troops means that all bets are now off in the Middle East
By invading northern Syria last week, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan achieved what many thought impossible – uniting all the regional countries and rival powers with a stake in the country in furious opposition to what they see as a reckless, destabilising move.
A truculent nationalist-populist with dictatorial tendencies, Erdoğan has often cast himself as one man against the world during 16 consecutive years as Turkey’s prime minister and president. Now he really is on his own.
Continue reading...Mark Esper, US defense secretary, insisted ‘we are not abandoning’ Kurds and that Turkey wasn’t given a ‘green light’
An “impulsive” decision by Turkey to invade northern Syria will further destabilize a region already caught up in civil war, the US defense secretary said on Friday, arguing that the withdrawal of US troops from the border does not mean America has abandoned its Syrian Kurdish allies.
Donald Trump’s decision to pull back troops from the Syrian border region has been widely criticized as a tacit “green light” for a Turkish offensive that intensified on Friday, with air and artillery strikes on Kurdish militia.
Continue reading...Martin Chulov reports from north-east Syria on the deadliest day yet of the Turkish offensive
In a wooden hut at the back of a hospital, a woman cradled the head of a dead man and dabbed away grime and blood with a sponge. A blanket covered the man’s mutilated lower half. His blood-soaked military fatigues were still wrapped around his chest.
On a table behind, another body lay zipped into a large blue bag – a young woman this time, also dressed in green and wearing the patches of Kurdish forces. The medical worker straightened her head and gently swept the dead woman’s hair from her face. “We have five martyrs now,” she said, pointing across the makeshift morgue. “Three military and two civilians. The fighters were trying to rescue the others.”
Continue reading...Turkey has pressed ahead with its assault on US-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria, forcing thousands of civilians to flee airstrikes and shelling. The military action has deepened fears of a humanitarian and political crisis, as the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Bethan McKernan, explains
After religious leaders tried to stop girls taking part in the sport, local coaches came up with an unlikely solution
A secret pitch where girls can play football away from the disapproving gaze of religious leaders and the rise of a top female football referee are among the unlikely success stories emerging from a refugee camp in north Lebanon.
Under the aegis of a project to encourage learning through sport, Nahr el-Bared, a camp where thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees continue to live hand-to-mouth in dire conditions, has become the improbable setting for a minor cultural revolution.
Continue reading...As they seek safety away from Turkish shells, Syrian Kurds burn with anger at Donald Trump’s betrayal
Waiting at a roadside depot, Hussein Rammo, a stooped elderly Kurd, his eyes wet with tears, had the look of a broken man. “Betrayal leaves the bitterest taste,” he said, his voice at a whisper as he discussed Donald Trump’s decision to abandon Syria’s Kurds.
“I am 63 years old and I have never seen anything like this. Before there was regime oppression and now we are getting betrayal. This is worse.”
Continue reading...Owner says in statement that two blasts onboard Sabiti were “probably caused by missile strikes”
An explosion damaged an Iranian oil tanker traveling through the Red Sea near Saudi Arabia on Friday, causing oil to leak into the Red Sea, Iranian media and the tanker’s owner have reported.
The National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) said in a statement that the hull of the Sabiti was hit by two separate explosions about 60 miles off the Saudi coast.
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