Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Muhammad Hussein
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The West is engineering a neo-colonial starvation of Afghanistan, for women’s sake
Barely eight decades ago, while it was fighting the Nazis’ fascism, the British government under Winston Churchill was simultaneously orchestrating and engineering one of the worst famines in human history. As a result of Britain’s imperial policies, and with the excuse of wartime in 1943, around 3 million natives...
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Cryptocurrencies may be the last hope for those in the Middle East
Everything in existence will be assimilated into the online world. Some things already have been. This has proven true with business, shopping, services, social life, journalism, warfare and with the recently-announced ‘metaverse’, perhaps even our lives. So it was only a matter of time before money itself was integrated...
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Winners of Palestine Book Awards 2021 announced
Middle East Monitor’s flagship annual literary awards ceremony – the Palestine Book Awards (PBA) – has entered its 10th year today, as awards were handed out to the winning authors and books in the much-awaited event....
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One politician is steering Britain to the far-right
Few politicians in Britain’s ruling Conservative Party are as controversial and unpopular as Home Secretary Priti Patel. Not the former health minister Matt Hancock, not the housing and communities minister Michael Gove, not even the notoriously blundering Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but Priti Patel. In just two years as home...
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The Middle East looks likely to be a focal point for the post-pandemic ‘Great Reset’
Almost two years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic it is worth reviewing what has happened. With lockdowns around the world, preventative measures varied from country to country; theories about the origins of the coronavirus and its consequences were many. Apart from the development of vaccines and the...
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Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said
If there was one figure central to postcolonial studies and the intellectual force behind the Palestinian meeting with Western academia, it was undoubtedly the late Edward W Said. Although he was an American citizen –his father having fled to the US to escape Ottoman conscription in World War One...
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Remembering the Wadi Araba Treaty and Jordan’s ‘cold peace’ with Israel
What: The signing of a peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, which ended over four decades of conflict. When: 26 October 1994 Where: Wadi Araba, Jordan-Israel border What happened? The major role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the 1967 war it fought with its allies Egypt and Syria against Israel (known...
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The world will regret bringing Assad in from the cold
When Jordanian King Abdullah II spoke with Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, on the phone earlier this month, it set a precedent that thawed a decade of ice between the two. A week prior to that, Amman had fully re-opened its main border crossing with Damascus, and the intelligence chiefs...
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‘Little Palestine’: How History Will Remember Assad’s Siege of Yarmouk
Over the course of the ongoing decade-long Syrian conflict, documentation of the war and its effects has always been desired by the outside world...
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By ignoring Lebanon’s fuel crisis, the Gulf States let Hezbollah lead the way
Lebanon has had a rough ride over the past year: the failure to secure a viable government; the catastrophic Beirut blast; then the economic crash which caused its currency to go into freefall. On top of all of this looms Hezbollah, which is ever-present within the crumbling Lebanese political...
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US-trained death squads are the dark legacy of the war on terror
There are relatively few truly world-changing events, but the 9/11 attack on New York’s World Trade Centre in 2001 was one. Regardless of the numerous theories that have surrounded it or the obvious and undisputable fact that revenge has been taken against innocent people directly and indirectly worldwide, it...
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Turkish ultranationalists should know that Assad is their enemy, not Syrian refugees
Ever since the stabbing of a Turk by two Syrian refugees in the Altindag neighbourhood of Ankara in early August, relations between the two communities have changed. Almost a decade of near-continuous migration to Turkey, rising unemployment and a tumbling economy broke through the barriers and erupted that night,...
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Even love is forbidden under Israeli apartheid
Israel’s apartheid system directed at the Palestinians is well documented. Within Israel’s officially-recognised borders — which the state has never actually declared — as well as across the occupied Palestinian territories, the people of occupied Palestine have long faced systematic discrimination which denies them the same rights afforded to...
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The Taliban won legitimacy through armed struggle, now it must earn it through diplomacy
When provincial capitals fell one after another last week, surrendering to the Taliban and relinquishing the glittering mansions of the warlords who fled the country, it was clear to many that the battle for Afghanistan would soon be over. Contrary to predictions that the group’s entry into Kabul would...
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Lobbying in Britain’s Conservative Party illustrates the dark ties to the Gulf alliances with Israel
When the extent of former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s involvement in lobbying for the investment company Greensill Capital was revealed by the BBC’s “Panorama” programme this week, the revelations went far beyond his role in the scandal. It goes back years but the investigation was only launched properly...
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Unlike secularists, ‘Islamists’ in Tunisia were weak but not undemocratic
When the Tunisian President Kais Saied dismissed the country’s government a week ago, everyone knew it would be a turning point in the North African state’s history, just not in what way. Announcing that “We have taken these decisions…until social peace returns to Tunisia and until we save the state,”...
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Remembering Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus
What: Turkey’s invasion of the north of Cyprus following a military coup which aimed to annex the island to Greece When: 20 July 1974 Where: Cyprus What happened? Upon Britain’s granting of independence to the island of Cyprus in 1955, the Cypriots were a mixed crowd of Turks and Greeks who had lived...
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The veto on aid for north-west Syria proves the failure of international institutions
The last official border crossing open for humanitarian aid to get into north-west Syria is about to close. The lives of almost four million people – including the displaced who were pushed north from their home towns because of attacks by the Syrian regime and its allies — are...
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If the US withdraws from Afghanistan, who will fill the security vacuum?
Military withdrawals announced by the United States don’t always happen the way that we expect them to. They are either drawn-out over a number of years, during which they may be delayed and rescheduled; are cancelled by the return of “boots on the ground” a short while later; or...
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With a new offensive on the horizon, Idlib is the Gaza of Syria
In Syria’s north-west, a renewed military offensive has apparently been long overdue. Since the very signing of the ceasefire deal between Russia and Turkey on behalf of the Syrian regime and opposition for the halting of the assault on Idlib, predictions abounded on how it would break down within...
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Could an international force really protect the Palestinians?
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has – despite Israeli forces sabotaging the peace with a raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque compound – held so far, officially at least. In Israeli-occupied Palestine, though, ceasefires come and go, and are usually broken by an Israeli action of some sort. The latest...
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As Israel creeps closer to its end game, there may be no third Intifada
Every year, usually during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, as if Palestinians are somehow unreactive without food in their stomachs, Israel does something that makes its security forces and their actions increasingly predictable. Like an annual festival, it launches an assault against the Palestinian population, either in the...
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The West’s genocide deniers are dragging down the Palestinian cause
Influential American academic Noam Chomsky asked what he called a “simple question” in a recent interview with the journalist Ezra Klein for the New York Times: “Is the situation of the Uyghurs, a million people who’ve been through education camps, is that worse than the situation of, say, two...
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Turkey and Ukraine could each be the foreign policy saviour of the other
Turkey has been criticised heavily over the past few years for what some see as a series of foreign policy blunders, from its military intervention in northern Syria to its assertiveness before the US and Europe. Now, though, it may have taken a very firm stance that could alter...