Tag Archives: Middle East

Dream of a caliphate as an Islamist homeland is receding. Mohammad Bash via Shutterstock Elisa Orofino, Anglia Ruskin University A “proto-state”, a “socio-political movement, the ”beast“ – all names given to a single group that, at its height, seemed to embody the west’s worst nightmare. You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here. Islamic State …

Jerusalem, the city that is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. S1001/Shutterstock. Ronit Berger Hobson, Queen’s University Belfast When filmmaker Gillian Moseley, a Jewish Anglo-American, decided to make a documentary examining the question of belonging and home in the Holy Land – the coastal strip that stretches from Syria to Egypt, with Israel in the centre – she believed she …

When does a ‘clash’ become an ‘assault’? AP Photo/Maya Levin Maha Nassar, University of Arizona Israeli police attacked mourners carrying the coffin of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 13, 2022, beating pallbearers with batons and kicking them when they fell to the ground. Yet those who skimmed the headlines of initial reports from several U.S. media outlets …

Mohamed-Ali Adraoui, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) Ten years after people rose up against their leaders in country after country around the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunisia to Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain, what can we say about how society, politics and religion have changed in the region? To put it mildly, the social, cultural, religious, political …

Johan Franzen, University of East Anglia Following his capture by American troops, Saddam Hussein made a startling admission to George Piro, the FBI investigator tasked with interrogating him. The reason he had played cat and mouse with UN weapons inspectors for over a decade was not because he was trying to hide Iraqi production of weapons of mass destruction from …

The rubble after the raid on Islamic State group leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed Haroro J. Ingram, George Washington University; Amira Jadoon, United States Military Academy West Point, and Andrew Mines, George Washington University An overnight raid conducted by U.S. special forces in Syria has resulted in the death of the leader of the terrorist Islamic State …

The author has an evening cuppa while searching for a lost convoy of medical supplies – in remote Zibok district (1996). © Sippi Azarbaijani Moghaddam, Author provided Sippi Azarbaijani Moghaddam, University of St Andrews It was April 1995, and I was preparing to travel to Afghanistan for my first volunteer post with a UK charity. I had travelled to London …

Shutterstock Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra The government of Qatar has expressed “regrets” for “any distress or infringement on the personal freedoms” suffered by women subjected to invasive physical searches after the discovery of an abandoned newborn at Doha airport. Among the women taken off a Qatar Airways flight for Sydney for the searches – which extended to passengers on …

Eleanor Scerri, Author provided Julien Louys, Griffith University; Gilbert Price, The University of Queensland; Huw Groucutt, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and Michael Petraglia, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History If you stood in the middle of the Nefud Desert in central Arabia today, you’d be confronted on all sides by enormous sand …

Collection of sediment DNA samples in the Main Chamber of Denisova Cave. Bert Roberts, Author provided Elena Zavala, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Matthias Meyer, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Richard ‘Bert’ Roberts, University of Wollongong, and Zenobia Jacobs, University of Wollongong In the foothills of the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia lies Denisova Cave. It is the …