Middle East Near You

Twelve world leaders, the UN, the EU, the Arab League and the African Union attended the Berlin Conference on Libya last Sunday. They produced a very detailed communique of...

Diplomatic activities between Moscow, Ankara, Tripoli and Benghazi finally yielded some kind of lull in the nine-month war over control of Tripoli, the Libyan capital. On Sunday 12 January,...

Last Monday marked a turning point in the ongoing battle for Tripoli. The Libyan National Army (LNA) entered the coastal city of Sirte, the home town of former ruler...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is submitting a bill to the Turkish parliament seeking approval for its plans to send troops to Libya. The parliament is expected to approve the...

Millions of Algerians cast their votes on 12 December and chose 74-year-old former Prime Minister Abdelmadjid Tebboune as their country’s first freely-elected President since independence from France in 1962....

Last Tuesday, 17 December, marked four years since the Libyan Political Accord (LPA) was signed in Skhirat, Morocco creating the Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by Fayez Al-Sarraj....

Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA) signed on 27 November two documents with Turkey. One deals with security while the other draws out the maritime boundaries between the two...

On Tuesday the United States House Intelligence Committee, investigating President Donald Trump, issued its report on the impeachment of the republican. Yesterday, the process of impeaching him moved to...

This month marked 15 years since Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat passed away in what remain suspicious circumstances. Arafat came to symbolise not only the Palestinian struggle for independence but...

It appears that Libya’s Minister of Justice, Mohamed Lamloum, underestimated the public reaction to his statements before the International Criminal Court (ICC) last Tuesday. The ICC was hearing an...

On Monday and Tuesday this week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) held a hearing for Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi’s challenge to the admissibility of his case before the court. Gaddafi...

Sixty-five years ago, the people of Algeria rose in great numbers and picked up arms against France, the local colonial power. Thus began one of the bloodiest national struggles...

Better late than never sums up Moscow’s newfound interest in Africa. While Russia is no stranger to the continent, Moscow’s African policy stalled after the collapse of the Soviet...

In February 2017, after less than a year in office, Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti managed to reduce the flow of illegal migration out of Libya by 87 per...

Kais Saied is the new President of Tunisia after a landslide election victory with 72.71 per cent of the votes cast. Saied received 2.7 million votes while his rival,...

World oil supplies have been at the centre of every major crisis in the Middle East for the last seven decades. Having nearly 67 per cent of world oil...

Germany is to host an international meeting on Libya sometime before the end of October – some say before the end of the year. This is the latest attempt...

Since they took to the streets in their thousands earlier this year, the people of Algeria have achieved very little. Their demands, meanwhile, have multiplied despite being, occasionally, unattainable...

Now it is official; Kais Saied, hardly known outside the university walls made it to the second round of presidential elections in Tunisia with 18.4 per cent of the...

Is the United States withdrawing from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, or it is just missing the magical focal policy that it occasionally had in years...

Many believe United States President Donald Trump is helping Israel in an unprecedented way and the son of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu, Yair, is one of them....

Friday 30 August is the 11th anniversary of the treaty signed by Libya and Italy on Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation bringing to an end a long, turbulent chapter of...

It is notable that, in Libya’s current violence, there is an absence of serious local peace initiatives. In previous conflicts across the war-ravaged country, local tribal leaders and dignitaries...

The last time that Siham Sergiwa spoke publicly was from her Benghazi home on 16 July, during a TV talk show. The following morning, she disappeared, apparently without trace. Speaking...

Eight years ago, NATO and its partners, killed nearly 200 Libyan civilians across the North African country. Eight years on, no one has been held accountable. Neither NATO nor...

Tunisia’s President Beji Caïd Essebsi died last Thursday in a military hospital in the capital Tunis. He was 92 years old and had been in ill health. Within hours,...

On 4 April, the Libyan National Army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar reached the outskirts of Tripoli, Libya’s capital. Unable to proceed, the LNA effectively laid siege to...

Between May 2011 and today the United Nations has appointed six special representatives to Libya, from five different nationalities, each serving less than two years. The present envoy, Ghassan...

Donald Rumsfeld, the notorious former United States defence secretary, in describing his endless war on terror, once said: “We need a new vocabulary.” How would Rumsfeld, an advocate of...

At least 44 migrants were killed in Tajoura’s detention centre and more than 140 others were wounded when a rocket hit it in the early hours yesterday. The Tajoura...

In 1970, a few months after he took power, the late Muammar Gaddafi expelled all foreign military bases from the country. Between the end of World War II and...

When commander Khalifa Haftar ordered forces loyal to him, known as the Libyan National Army (LNA), to march on the capital Tripoli on 4 April, he did not set...