Middle East Near You

As the year closes and a new one begins, it is clear that Sudan is in the worst economic and political crisis it has ever experienced during its independence....

The long-awaited return of Al Sadiq Al-Mahdi passed without the expected euphoria partly because of the death of his brother the night before. Descending from a plane at Khartoum...

The surprise visit to Syria by Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir to meet his counterpart, Bashar Al-Assad, has raised more questions than it answers. Why was there no official announcement?...

If the 2018 election law was supposed to unite the opposition and the government in agreement about the forthcoming elections in 2020, the bill which was passed last week...

These days, predicting Sudan’s political and economic prospects is perhaps a job best left to speculators and fortune tellers. The plethora of economic woes and political strife has become...

In the heart of the Sudanese capital’s Omdurman Wad Nubawi district sits Sarah Abdullah Abdurrahman Nugallah, one of the most powerful women in Sudanese politics. Nugallah is Secretary General...

This week’s sentencing of one of the most powerful intelligence officers in Sudan has not only sent shockwaves through the ranks of the National Security and Intelligence Service (NISS)...

A day after Sudan announced plans to reduce the size of its government by over 50 per cent the extent of the economic deadlock has become clear. With the...

Just fifteen days after President Salva Kiir of South Sudan told the world in Addis Ababa that his political rival, Riek Machar, could never again be part of the...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s emphatic first round victory in Turkey’s snap election is being regarded in the country as much as a resounding defeat for a lacklustre opposition as the...

It is by no means certain who will be the occupant of Ankara’s Presidential Palace come Monday morning. There are no predictions by election pundits of a landslide win...

This week’s cabinet decision to put forward a new election law appears to support the view that some members of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) are planning to...

The Sudanese are not generally known for peddling conspiracy theories. However, during this severe economic crisis many elaborate claims and counter claims about the causes and consequences of the...

The arrest of 16 prominent businessmen on charges of corruption and embezzlement may have made the media headlines in Sudan, but under the country’s current “illegal wealth” laws there...

Despite the growing domestic disquiet, the Sudanese government has again confirmed it has no plans to pull its estimated 10,000 troops out of Yemen. The calls for withdrawal have...

The sacking of Sudan’s Foreign Minister, Professor Ibrahim Ghandour, does not appear to be a surprise for many within the Sudanese diplomatic corps, unlike the rest of the country,...

For young people in Sudan, it is not difficult to understand the link between learning English and ending up dead in the Mediterranean Sea. That may sound far-fetched, but...

Last month’s shock reappointment of Salah Abdallah Mohamed Saleh, known as Gosh, as the head of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) was a snap decision that stunned...

As Sudan’s ambassador returns to Cairo today after a two-month absence, the precise reasons for Abdel-Mahmood Abdel-Halim’s dramatic withdrawal remains unexplained. Likewise, there is no available information on the...

On 13 November last year, a report was released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the state of consumer subsidies in Sudan. It received scant media coverage but...

The irony of the presence of Egyptian troops gathering on the Eritrean-Sudanese border over its objection to Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam is not lost on legal experts aware of Egypt’s...

With the recall of Sudan’s Ambassador from Egypt, the closure of the Eritrean Border and a recent visit by Turkey’s President in which a Turkish takeover of a strategic...

When Sudan’s Ismail Azhari was sworn into office in 1954 as the nation’s first Prime Minister, he led his country into independence two years later while facing a series...

The two-day visit to Khartoum by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to meet his Sudanese counterpart Omar Al-Bashir this week, marks a new phase in the relationship between the...

For more than five years the British government have been waiting for the right moment to reengage commercially with Sudan, its former colony.  The hope, in the corridors of...

The timing of the call to withdraw Sudan’s troops from Yemen may just be a coincidence; however, ten days after Sudan’s President, Omar Al-Bashir, met in Sochi the Russian...

As the Sudanese President returned home from his trip to Sochi to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the world’s media overwhelmingly seized on his plead that Moscow should provide...

Some 25 years after Sudan was notoriously labelled as a state sponsor of terror, the job of clearing its name and the hope of overturning the classification remains one...

Amid calls for the arrest of the Sudanese President on his three day visit to Uganda, a Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo defended the decision not to hand over...

Days after the official easing of sanctions, the economic situation in Sudan has prompted the view that US sanctions are not in fact and have not perhaps been the...

The news that President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan plans to seek a third term in the forthcoming 2020 election may be music to the ears of his supporters but...

As Dr Ali Al-Hajj, the leader of the opposition Popular Congress Party, sat in the presidential office this week to discuss a new peace initiative with the President of...