You see these gravity-defying quiffs everywhere in Iraq’s capital: on reception staff in the secure hotels, on waiters in cafes and on the youths who gather in Zawra amusement park on Friday afternoons. Often teamed with drainpipe trousers and a fitted jacket, the flashy, ostentatious haircut requires care. It says something of the city’s new confidence: a rejection of the long years of sanctions and war
Continue reading...Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa
Endgame for the Isis ‘caliphate’ looms in small Syrian town
Special forces said to be preparing to storm Baghuz to flush out last Islamic State diehards
They left Baghuz in a convoy of trucks, slowly snaking across the desert as thin trails of black smoke from mortar strikes drifted into the sky behind them.
The Islamic State fighters dangled their legs off the backs of vehicles normally used for transporting sheep. Brightly coloured keffiyehs wrapped around their faces, they stared at Kurdish troops as they passed without saying a word.
Continue reading...I witnessed the purgatory of people trapped in Syria’s Rukban camp | Marwa Awad
Constant hunger and thirst haunt those stranded in the desert, where escape means paying vast sums to smugglers
Between the southern border of Syria, Jordan and Iraq lies a stretch of land akin to purgatory. More than 40,000 people are stranded in Rukban, almost 300km from Damascus.
Families here are cut off from the world, facing hunger and lacking healthcare, transport and education.
Continue reading...Despite the slaughter in Yemen, Britain is still chasing arms sales | Andrew Smith
Defence contractors are in Abu Dhabi this week for the Middle East’s biggest arms fair – supported to the hilt by UK ministers
A Khaleeji bagpipe band, a colourful aircraft display, a performance by the Armenian Military Orchestra and a big show of support from the Emirate royal families. These were some of the touches at Sunday’s opening ceremony for the International Defence Exhibition and Conference (Idex 2019) in Abu Dhabi, the Middle East’s biggest arms fair.
It’s a decadent and distasteful celebration of militarism and weaponry. Missiles, rifles, tanks, helicopters and warships are on display for anyone that can afford them. More than 100,000 people will attend this week, including representatives from all of the world’s biggest arms companies and military delegates from 57 nations. Among those looking to do business is the UK government, which has sent a team of civil servants to support UK arms company reps in doing as much business as possible. Particularly with the uncertainty of Brexit on the horizon, they will pull out all stops to cement sales.
Continue reading...Jeremy Hunt urges Germany to rethink Saudi arms sales ban
UK foreign secretary visits Berlin after raising concerns about impact of moratorium
Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign secretary, will visit Berlin on Wednesday after urging Germany to exempt big defence projects from its efforts to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia, or face damage to both its economic and European credentials.
Related: UK's arms export supervisor attacks NGOs over Yemen deaths
Continue reading...Shamima Begum: Isis Briton faces move to revoke citizenship
Family disappointed at Home Office decision and considering legal position, says lawyer
The family of a teenager who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State has been told the Home Office intends to revoke her British citizenship, according to their lawyer.
Shamima Begum, who left her home in Bethnal Green, east London, at the age of 15, is in a refugee camp in Syria, where she gave birth to a boy at the weekend.
Continue reading...House investigates ‘White House plan’ to share nuclear technology with Saudis
Top Trump officials pushed plan to share technology despite objections, according to House oversight committee report
Top White House officials pushed a plan to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia, despite objections from career national security staff, according to a new congressional report.
Related: A public holiday and gold-plated gun: Saudi crown prince feted on Asia tour
Continue reading...Sharm el-Sheikh locals lament ‘wall’ going up around resort
Project aims to recoup lost tourism income since downing of Russian plane in Sinai
Egyptian authorities have started work on a concrete barrier around the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, which has struggled to attract tourists since a Russian passenger jet crashed in the region shortly after taking off in 2015 in a terrorism-linked attack, killing 224 people.
Related: Egyptian president says Russian plane was deliberately downed
Continue reading...Syrian Kurdish leader calls for international force to protect Kurds
Ilham Ahmed says Kurds want observers on the border to ensure Turkey does not attack
The leader of the Syrian Kurds has called for a small international observer force to be stationed on the Turkey-Syria border to protect Kurds from what she says is the threat of crimes against humanity committed by Turkish forces.
Ilham Ahmed is co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council – the political arm of the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have been responsible for liberating much of north-eastern Syria from Islamic State.
Continue reading...Trump’s ‘bring jihadists home’ call gets mixed response in Europe
Germany will put fighters on trial, while Hungary says they should not be allowed back
Donald Trump’s demand that Germany, France and Britain repatriate and prosecute their citizens fighting in Syria has met a mixed response in Europe as countries baulk at the difficulties involved in taking back hundreds of alleged jihadis.
Germany pledged on Monday to put its foreign fighters on trial, but warned their repatriation would be “extremely difficult”, while France said it would not act for now on Trump’s call but would take militants back on a “case-by-case” basis.
Continue reading...Summit cancelled as Israel and Poland row over Holocaust
Israeli foreign minister accuses Poles of hatred towards Jews in remarks described as ‘racist’ by Polish PM
Poland has pulled out of a planned trip to Jerusalem and scuppered an international summit the same day officials were due to arrive, after Israel’s foreign minister accused Poles of hatred against Jews and complicity in the Holocaust.
Israel Katz, who was appointed acting foreign minister on Sunday, said Poles “suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk”. Speaking on another radio show on Monday morning, he accused all Polish people of harbouring “innate” antisemitism.
Continue reading...Final days of the ‘Isis caliphate’ – photo essay
Photojournalist Achilleas Zavallis has been in Syria covering the collapse of Islamic State across the region and the resultant displacement of families
For the past week the Syrian Democratic Forces have been trying to defeat the last remnants of Islamic State that fortified themselves in the small town located on the banks of the Euphrates River, near the Iraqi border.
Continue reading...Exclusive: US woman who ‘deeply regrets’ joining Isis wants to come home – audio
Four years ago, 24-year-old Hoda Muthana left her family in the US to travel to Syria and join Islamic State. Now, after being captured by Kurdish forces, she is pleading to return home to Alabama
* Hear the Guardian's Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, speak to Hoda Muthana about her life with Isis and eventual escape on tomorrow's Today in Focus
US woman ‘deeply regrets’ joining Isis and wants to return home
Exclusive: Hoda Muthana is only American among 1,500 foreign women and children at a Syrian refugee camp
An American woman captured by Kurdish forces after fleeing the last pocket of land controlled by Islamic State says she “deeply regrets” travelling to Syria to join the terror group and has pleaded to be allowed to return to her family in Alabama.
Related: Agonising hunt by US father for children trapped in Isis enclave
Continue reading...Arab world’s first female interior minister hails ‘point of pride for women’
Raya al-Hassan is one of four women taking cabinet jobs in new Lebanese government
The Arab world’s first female interior minister has hailed her appointment as a “point of pride for all women”.
Raya al-Hassan is one of four women to take cabinet jobs in the new Lebanese government, a record for the country and three more than in the last government, in which even the minister for women was a man.
Continue reading...Iran’s foreign minister says public are losing faith in nuclear deal
Javad Zarif urges EU to defend agreement and accuses Israel of seeking war with Iran
The Iranian public are on the brink of abandoning faith in the nuclear deal signed with Europe and other world powers in 2015, putting pressure on the regime to pull out of the deal, Iran’s foreign minister has said.
Speaking at the Munich security conference, Javad Zarif also accused Israel of seeking war with Iran and said Europe needed to be prepared to “get wet if it wants to swim against the dangerous tide of US unilateralism”.
Continue reading...Warsaw-Jerusalem tensions rise over ‘Nazi link’ claims
Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments cause anger in Poland ahead of summit
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to build friendly relations with central European nations are being tested, on the eve of a Jerusalem summit aimed at showcasing the alliance, by disputes over Holocaust history.
Netanyahu has long been criticised by domestic opponents for seeking political alliances in central Europe while turning a blind eye to historical revisionism and antisemitism in the region. However, the Israeli leader was caught up in the dispute last week, when he said during a visit to Warsaw that Poles had collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Continue reading...Agonising hunt by US father for children trapped in Isis enclave
In the Syrian camp where British teenager Shamima Begum was found, a father’s desperately searches for two infants, taken from their Florida home by their mother to join Islamic State
In late March 2015, Bashiurul Shikder made an urgent call home to ask about his wife and children. The 37-year-old American had just completed a pilgrimage to Mecca and his repeated messages to his wife in Florida had gone unanswered for over a week. Come home, his family told him. They’re in hospital. A short while later came the truth: “They finally told me, ‘they’re gone’,” said Shikder. “She’d taken them to Isis.”
In the anguished following days and the four long years since, Shikder’s search for his children, Yusuf, then seven, and Zahra, then three, has been a bitter journey, which he has kept to himself until now. As the ground held by Islamic State shrank, Shikder desperately followed his family’s retreat to the last enclave of the final town held by the group – a battered pocket of an eastern Syrian town named Baghuz.
Continue reading...The collapse of Isis will inflame the regional power struggle
From Russia to Turkey and Iraq, the rout of the caliphate brings new political considerations and shifting alliances
The collapse of the Isis caliphate’s last stronghold in Syria is sending shockwaves across the region, changing the calculations of the major powers as they jockey for advantage. Triumphalism in Washington, Moscow and Damascus risks obscuring the human cost of a “victory” that may quickly prove transitory.
Of immediate concern is the fate of civilians, mainly women and children, displaced from formerly Isis-controlled areas where many were held against their will. The independent International Rescue Committee says up to 4,000 people are fleeing towards the al-Hawl refugee camp in north-east Syria.
Continue reading...Islamic State: Trump calls on European allies to take 800 fighters captured in Syria
President says caliphate ‘ready to fall’ and US doesn’t want to watch ‘fighters permeate Europe’
Donald Trump has asked his European allies to “take back over 800” Islamic State fighters captured in Syria and put them on trial.
“The Caliphate is ready to fall,” the US president said in a tweet. “The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them ...”
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