Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Muhammad Hussein
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Will mercenary Gulf armies signal a new Western colonial security order?
Much has been written over the past decade on the prevalence of mercenary forces – so-called private military companies (PMCs) – in combat zones, ranging across Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and even Sudan. Much has also been written on the various efforts by Gulf Arab states to create a...
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The West must decide what to support: Israel’s genocide in Gaza or Ukraine’s war against Russia
Walking the streets of Lviv in western Ukraine in December, trying to avoid the deadly black ice which is the bane of winters there, the last thing I expected to hear was the question “What do you think about Israel and Palestine?” I turned my face to Yulia, a...
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A US military withdrawal from Syria could overturn the chessboard, but not for the better
Many have hailed this decade as one of American withdrawal from the world stage, whether for strategic reasons or due to simple ineptness by civilisational decline. As the world witnessed the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, though, it became ever more evident that such a...
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Palestine Book Awards 2023 winners announced during night of solidarity with Gaza
The event, held virtually in order to allow the participation of authors in the Occupied West Bank who are unable to travel as a result of the Israeli Occupation authorities’ restrictions, was joined by Palestinian poet from Gaza, Mosab Abu Toha, a survivor of the ongoing atrocities and genocide and...
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Has the Axis of Resistance finally found the ‘road to Jerusalem’?
Much attention has surrounded the ‘Axis of Resistance’ over the years, with many anticipating the actions of that loose coalition of movements, militias, and states united in their claimed opposition to the West and its allies in the Middle East. The Axis’s slogans have been grand, its parades and...
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Profile: Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of Hamas
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin grew up as a refugee in Gaza after he was driven out of Al-Jaura, a Palestinian village depopulated in 1948 by Zionist forces, along with his family. In 1987, Yassin co-founded Hamas as an armed resistance movement against the then 20-year-old Israeli occupation. ...
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Gaza is the dystopia that conspiracy theorists fear, so why do they still support Israel?
Since the start of Israel’s renewed bombardment of the Gaza Strip and the invasion to eradicate Palestinian Resistance group, Hamas, along with the entire Gazan population, it served to further shed light on which individuals, sectors of society and political affiliations persist in support for the occupation. There emerged a...
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Arab democrats: 'A new wave of the Arab Spring is coming, and the world must support it'
It is a rare sight for opposition parties and figures in any region to be united in their goals or even views, and such a thing only occurs when there is a force sufficiently hated by all to justify their unity. In terms of the democratic opposition throughout the...
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Amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, are we witnessing the fall of Zionism?
Around 50 years before the creation of the state of Israel, British explorer and diplomat Richard F. Burton wrote in his book The Jew, the Gypsy, and El-Islam about the concept of a Jewish state in the holy land, which was being proposed by the emerging Zionist movement at...
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Out of Time: The Collected Stories of Samira Azzam
It takes a certain level of skill to encapsulate the plight of an oppressed people, the nostalgia of distant and forgotten days, and the inexplicable heartbreak of generational trauma in short stories – there is simply barely enough space to attain that sort of depth – but those in...
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The Arab World’s democratic transition has kicked off in Sarajevo
It is ironic that a conference on democracy in the Arab world could not be held in the capital of any Arab country, and was instead held in the capital of a politically-unstable Balkan state that itself remains vulnerable to separatist and ethnic intrigues. According to the Arab Council, its...
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The Turks are winning the new Great Game at the Caspian
One region where events seem to have been developing at breakneck speed over the past few years is that of Nagorno-Karabakh, the former Armenian-dominated breakaway republic which – despite being internationally-recognised as Azerbaijani territory – had been ruled by Armenian militants with support from Yerevan over the past three...
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IMEC will fail to rival China Silk Road by neglecting key developing nations
In this era of grand projects and geopolitical interconnectedness, it was no surprise, this month, when a memorandum of understanding was announced on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi that numerous nations will work to establish a vast ship and rail corridor, stretching from India across...
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Remembering the Zionists’ assassination of UN Palestine mediator Count Bernadotte
Bernadotte was most notably known for securing the release of thousands of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps during World War II...
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The Libya people have spoken, and ties with Israel are forced back into the shadows
As protests erupted throughout the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and other cities in the country in response to the Foreign Minister’s secret meeting with her Israeli counterpart last week, it served as a stark reminder of the rampant disconnect between the country’s political leaderships and the general population, along with...
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The scramble for the Global South: Foreign domination or self-sufficiency?
The year 2023 has, so far, proven to be an eventful year for the “Global South”, the loose collective of nations with developing, less developed or under-developed economies, which has served more as an abstract idea than a unitary reality until now. When the military coup in Niger took place...
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Putting Saudi’s Vision 2030 over human rights may be a very sinister part of the plan
When it was confirmed by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change last week that it had continued its £9 million partnership with Saudi Arabia even after the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, there was little surprise expressed by either the media...
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Is the West turning against Kosovo to appease the Serbs?
In a globalised world where a largely stable international order of nation states with agreed-upon boundaries is in place, borders contested by rival nations are few and far between. Those who grow up in the Western world in particular are generally unaware of such places, or at least ignorant...
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Riots in France do not mean an alien takeover of Europe
It was entirely predictable that when riots erupted in France after 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk was killed by a police officer they would provide another opportunity for the far-right in France and beyond to blame immigration and foreigners. Claims surfaced online and in the socio-political sphere that the rioters were...
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Has the Wagner mutiny ended Russia’s dream of hegemony in the global south?
Tensions which had long been brewing reached a climax on 24 June when the leader of the infamous Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, announced a march on Moscow against the Russian army and government, which he finally blamed for the invasion of Ukraine. The “mutiny” was essentially the culmination...
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Remembering the 1989 coup in Sudan
Many see the 1989 coup as instrumental in leading Sudan to many of the crises it is currently undergoing, and the country seems far from the civilian and democratic rule its people have long hoped for....
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In the Taliban’s war on drugs, the West chooses condemnation instead of assistance
Governments and regimes throughout the world have been no strangers to using narcotics as a major revenue source. More recently, during this era of sanctions, that practice has been an effective tactic to circumvent such measures. Entities and figures in isolated states such as Venezuela and Iran represent key examples...
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Unlike their media, Western nations recognise the necessity of Erdogan’s Turkiye
The month of May has seen a replay of the past decade of both Turkish politics and the Western nations’ dealings with it: the old rivalry between Turkiye’s secularist body politic and its ‘Islamist’-inspired ruling party, the exaggeration of both by Western media, and the significant ultranationalist base underlying...
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Reconciliation with Assad is a strategic mistake and backward step for the Arab world
Syria’s return to the Arab League this month was momentous, not because it came as a complete surprise – it did not – nor because it changes much on the ground – it does not – but simply because it shows the unfortunate reality that Arab governments have not...