Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Mustafa Fetouri
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Is France being chased out of Africa for good or could it launch a comeback?
Landlocked Chad, a West African country, announced that it is breaking off its military and security ties with its former colonial master, France. Chad’s Foreign Minister, Abderaman Koulamallah, in making the surprise announcement on 28 November, declared that France should consider that “Chad has grown up, matured and is a…
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AFRICOM: Will it survive the Trump presidency and how will it operate in the future?
United States Africa Command, or AFRICOM, is a military structure founded in 2007 with the entire African continent as, to use the military jargon, its “theatre of operations”. The idea behind establishing the Command is hegemonic in nature and interventional in practice. The Command’s mission statement says AFRICOM “counters transitional…
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Desperate to appease Israel, Germany goes out of its way
Since October 2023 and the Palestinian Resistance’s daring attack on Israel, Germany – not any other European country – emerged as the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, second only to the United States. The Swedish Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), estimated that, while the US provided 69 per…
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Libya’s municipal elections expose the hypocrisy of the rotten political elite
16 November marked an important day in Libya as it managed to, successfully, organise elections in 58 municipalities across the huge country despite all difficulties facing such a big operation. From Al-Burdy on the Egyptian borders to Al-Kufra near the Sudanese borders, all the way to Ubrai near the borders…
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Trump’s victory means Americans voted for the Republic not the Empire
Back in 2016 when Donald Trump first announced his presidential bid, almost every senior US politician dismissed him, usually with a kind of mockery that made fun of him. President Obama, for instance, said Donald Trump “will not be president”. Why? Because, he said, his trust in the “American people”…
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Israel’s US-backed long war against the United Nations
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted its Resolution 69 on 4 May, 1949 recommending that the UN General Assembly (UNGA) admit Israel as a member state. Interestingly enough, paragraph 1 of the Resolution reads: the Council “Decides in its judgement that Israel is a peace-loving State and is able…
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Israel forced the world to create UNRWA; now it wants UNRWA dead
At last, Israel took the decision it has been threatening for a long time: declare UNRWA an illegal entity, denying it the right to work from any territories under its control, including occupied lands in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Simply said, Israeli Knesset just banned the organisation that…
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Despite being dead for 13 years, Gaddafi is still a commanding figure in Libya
20 October, 2024 marks 13 years since the late Libyan leader, Muammer Gaddafi, was murdered as he tried to leave Sirte, his home town on the Mediterranean coast, where he made his last stand against the NATO-supported rebels. When he arrived there, Sirte was already under intense attack by the…
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Now that the historical leadership of Hezbollah is gone, will the Party go, too?
Over the last three months, starting last July, Israel succeeded in targeting the top Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon through a series of well coordinated and targeted assassinations that wiped out the entire organisations’ founding leaders. By 1 October, it managed to kill the Islamic Resistance’s political and military commander, the…
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Is Iran about to let go of its regional allies, from Yemen to Lebanon? Could it actually do that?
Social media is rife with conspiracy theories focused on how Iran sold out its allies, from the late Ismail Haniyeh to the late Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Similar theories also surround the exploding pagers and wireless devices that killed and injured thousands in Lebanon. In both cases, it all comes down to…
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Madrid Peace Conference, Take 2: challenging the failed US Middle East policy
On 13 September, Madrid hosted a group of Muslim and European nations, aimed at reviving the long-since-forgotten Middle East peace process. This time, though, what Spain and other European countries, including the EU itself want is a little different from what the United States wants, despite both sides agreeing on…
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The Contact Group for Gaza: Arab-Muslim hypocrisy at its finest
Early last November, barely a month after the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza had started, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia convened an extraordinary joint summit that brought together heads of states and government of both the League of Arab States (LAS) and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) aiming to…
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No war is coming to Libya and here is why
On 9 August, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) published a statement warning of a potential war in the country. The Mission, mediating reconciliation efforts in the country, pointed out that “recent mobilization of forces in various parts of Libya, particularly in the southern and western regions” could…
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Libya in light of Egypt-Turkiye rapprochement
With the arrival of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in Ankara, on 4 September, for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the long feud between the two regional powers appears to have ended on good terms. For years, both men have been trading barbs against each other, until relations started…
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Money in US elections: pro-Israel money corrupting the entire system
“Strengthening bipartisan support for the US-Israel relationship”: this is how the American-Israeli Affairs Public Committee (AIPAC) on X, former Twitter, profiles itself, giving the impression that it is only a simple group of lobbyists, among thousands of others, in a land where lobbying for whatever cause is legal, welcomed and…
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Libya’s Central Bank crisis exposes lack of legitimacy and strong foreign meddling hampering Libya’s progress
Crises in Libya multiply, sometimes, at a daunting speed, making tracking and analysing them a difficult task even for pundits and professional commentators. In many cases, it takes the most trivial of triggers to engulf the country, particularly the capital, Tripoli, in a spiralling crisis usually involving guns and shootouts…
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Memories of the fall of Tripoli 13 years ago and the striking similarities to what is going on today
13 years ago, on 20 August, 2011, the fall of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, began. It was not a swift end to the battle for the capital and the seat of power in a country already at war with itself. It was not slow, either. Rebels fighting under the umbrella…
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It is time for Arabs to stop blaming Hamas for the genocide in Gaza. Blame yourselves, instead
The overwhelming majority of ordinary Arabs and Muslims support and sympathise with the Palestinian people. They usually express this support and show such sympathy through their use of words in referring to Hamas and other resistance groups fighting Israel. They commonly call them heroes, courageous men and, when they want…
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Trans-Mediterranean Migration Forum in Tripoli: too much talk but little action
Early last month, the Tripoli-based government hosted the Trans-Mediterranean Migration Forum (TMMF), with the participation of 16 African and European states and 12 international and regional organisations, including the United Nations mission in Libya. Among the top leaders taking part were the Chadian President, Mohamed Idriss Deby, and Italian Prime…
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Turkiye-Syria rapprochement: how Erdogan the dove is trying to correct his mistakes as a hawk
“… For the sake of peace for the people, the country and the region, finally step down.” That was Turkiye’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, back in November 2011 calling on Syrian President, Bashar Al-Assad, to resign. Then, the Syrian bloodshed had just started, while Damascus responded with brutal force…
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What could another four years of Trump mean for the Middle East?
Right after the June US presidential debate, many observers of American politics were doubtful if Joe Biden would be the Democratic nominee to face Donald Trump in the 5 November election. By early July, that doubt turned into almost certainty that Biden would have to be replaced as the Democratic…
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Deepening Moroccan-Israeli military ties: who is the enemy?
News reports have it that Morocco has signed a $1 billion to buy an Israeli spy satellite to replace its two old satellites built by the joint European-owned Airbus and the French-owned Thales satellites. This latest deal has been shrouded in secrecy because it concerns building a spy satellite by…
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The Arab League after Gaza genocide: reform or die
No one can deny the fact that the Al-Aqsa Flood operation of 7 October, 2023, has changed almost everything in the region, making it a pivotal and turning point for the Middle East and how it should be handled by world powers. After nearly nine months of Israeli genocide in…
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The US’s long war on the international justice system and its mechanism
Responding to the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) back in 2002, the United States Congress passed what became publicly known as The Hague Invasion Act, literally authorising the president of the US to invade The Hague, a Dutch city where the ICC is seated. The Act, formally known…