|By Matein Khalid| Donald Trump’s shock win will have a profound impact on the GCC economic constellation via multiple feedback loops. His economic policies mean a much higher US dollar, anathema to GCC economies since it correlates with stock/property market crashes, banking stress and oil slumps. This is the macroeconomic linkage due to the GCC US dollar peg whose lessons the region learnt the hard way in […]
BERLIN — A German organization that calls itself the True Religion and that is known for distributing German-language copies of the Quran was outlawed on Tuesday, after the authorities accused it of recruiting jihadists to fight in Iraq and Syria. Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister, said the government had banned the True Religion organization, which is also known as Read (as in the instruction to […]
November 15, 2016 by: Kathrin Hille in Moscow Vladimir Putin has urged Donald Trump to co-operate on the war in Syria and develop economic ties in his first push to improve strained Russian relations with the US following America’s election. The Russian president spoke by telephone with Mr Trump, the US president-elect, late on Monday and expressed a “willingness to build a dialogue between partners with the […]
BRUSSELS: The European Union extended its sanctions on Syria on Monday, banning the country’s central bank chief and its finance minister from traveling in Europe and freezing their assets in a further step to isolate President Bashar Assad.The decision to target Central Bank Gov. Duraid Durgham and Finance Minister Maamoun Hamdan, along with 16 other government ministers, made good on the EU’s threat last month to increase […]
MOSCOW — A Russian fighter jet crashed off the Syrian coast on Monday while trying to land on an aging aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, Russian military officials said. The Russian Defense Ministry blamed a technical failure for the crash of the jet, a MIG-29, according to a ministry statement carried by the Interfax news agency. The pilot, who was the only one in the jet, ejected […]
ABU DHABI // The UAE has an important role in uniting Arab countries behind issues such as the Syrian crisis, a conference heard on Monday. Amr Moussa, former secretary general of the Arab League and Egyptian minister of foreign affairs said it was crucial that Saudi Arabia and Egypt should overcome their differences and share the same foreign policy objectives. “We need to get serious now. Even […]
JEDDAH: The UAE has urged President Donald Trump’s United States to develop a stronger strategy on the Middle East, after a “disconcerting vacuum” seen during Obama years.Anwar Gargash, the country’s minister of state for foreign affairs, said that the influence of Washington in the region was “more important than ever.”“Following eight years of weakened American engagement in the region, which many feel has created a disconcerting vacuum, […]
Photo Members from the Free Syrian Army take part in a battle in northern Syria last month against Islamic State fighters. Credit Nazeer Al-Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images BEIRUT, Lebanon — The hours are ticking down to what the Syrian government and its main ally, Russia, say could be the most devastating aerial assault yet on besieged rebel-held districts in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The Obama […]
RIYADH: Foreign ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will this week hold a meeting to draw up the agenda for a summit to be attended by the heads of GCC countries early next month in Bahrain. Collective security, military affairs, regional conflicts and common market as well as falling oil prices will make the agenda of the ministerial meeting.This GCC ministerial meeting, the first after […]
Iraqi forces say they have recaptured Nimrud, the site of an ancient Assyrian city seized by jihadi militants when they swept through northern Iraq in 2014. “Troops from the Ninth Armoured Division liberated Nimrud town completely and raised the Iraqi flag above its buildings,” the Iraqi army said in a statement on Sunday. Modern day Nimrud is about 1km west of the remnants of the 3,000-year-old city, […]
Photo Members of the Iraqi police tried to pull a body from a mass grave discovered in Hamam al-Alil on Monday. Credit Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images GENEVA — Islamic State militants have summarily killed scores of civilians in the Iraqi city of Mosul in recent days, sometimes using children as executioners, and have used chemical agents against Iraqi and Kurdish troops, United Nations officials said […]
MOSUL/BAGHDAD: Elite Iraqi forces were engaged in “intense” fighting with rebels in eastern Mosul on Saturday, an officer said, as civilians gathered on the city’s outskirts to flee. The special forces backed by US and Iraqi air power took control of two districts of eastern Mosul after heavy fighting in which they destroyed nine cars deployed by ISIS as suicide bombs, the military said.The military statement said […]
BEIRUT/MOSCOW/ANKARA: Backed by huge Russian support, the Syrian army captured the Dahiyet Assad district of western Aleppo on Saturday, reversing all the gains made by rebels two weeks into their counter-attack against government-held areas, a war monitor and rebel official said. In a related development, a flotilla of Russian warships is ready in the eastern Mediterranean off the Syrian coast after being sent to reinforce Russia’s military […]
MOSCOW: The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday it would need the UN mission in Syria to formally confirm its ability to deliver aid to eastern Aleppo before Moscow agreed to any new humanitarian pauses in fighting in the shattered Syrian city.Moscow says previous temporary cease-fires on the ground, to allow aid deliveries and the evacuation of the wounded and civilians, have come to nothing because rebels […]
ABU DHABI // More than 400 prominent international and regional decision-makers, politicians, and academics are set to converge on the Third Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate, ADSD, on November 13-14 at Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi. The event is being organised by the Emirates Policy Centre (EPC), in co-operation with the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and the Atlantic Council. The timing of the 2016 ADSD […]
Britain’s Brexiters have seized on the election of Donald Trump, arguing that it offers the chance to strengthen ties with the US, in an echo of the partnership forged decades ago between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has depicted Mr Trump’s victory as “a great opportunity”, emphasised the possibility of a post-Brexit trade deal, and called for Europe to snap out of […]
Syrian forces supported by Russian air power beat back rebel gains around the embattled city of Aleppo on Saturday, tightening the siege on opposition-held areas where civilians are grappling with critically low supplies of food and medicine. Embattled Aleppo, divided between rebel control on the east and government control on the west, has become one of the most violent battlegrounds of the five-year civil war between President […]
Photo A member of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a United States-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance, inside Syria. Credit Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday that he was likely to abandon the American effort to support “moderate” opposition groups in Syria who are battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying “we have no idea who these people are.” In an interview […]
The United Nations implored all sides in the Syria conflict on Thursday to allow food deliveries to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, where roughly 250,000 residents, under siege for months, just received their last rations. Russia appeared to reject the plea. “I don’t think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving in east Aleppo,” Jan Egeland, the United Nations official in charge of a humanitarian […]
ERBIL, Iraq — More than two years ago, a Christian farmer in his 70s named Mosa Zachariah fled his village near Mosul with, as he put it, only the pants he was wearing. He left behind his house, “tons of wheat” and a BMW. But now that his town, an early target of the Iraqi security forces as they advance on Mosul itself, has been cleared of […]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Crossing from Syria into Lebanon on Tuesday night proved to be a parable for the diametrically opposed ways the world sees the election of Donald J. Trump. At the passport counter, a Syrian officer’s face lit up when he saw an American traveler. “Congratulations on your new president!” he exclaimed, giving an energetic thumbs up. Mr. Trump, he said, would be “good for Syria.” […]
WASHINGTON — The United States has killed 119 civilians in Iraq and Syria since it began military operations against the Islamic State there in 2014, military officials said Wednesday. In each case, the American military followed the proper procedures and it did not violate laws of armed conflict, officials said. “Significant precautions were taken, despite the unfortunate outcome,” said Col. John J. Thomas, a spokesman for United […]
TEHRAN — For all of Iran’s attractions — breathtaking scenery and numerous World Heritage sites, among other things — there are plenty of downsides to vacationing in the Islamic republic. Alcohol is forbidden. There is very little night life, at least in public. All women, including visiting foreigners, are obliged to wear a head scarf. Then there are Iran’s politics: its strident anti-Western stance; seemingly random arrests […]
I took this video while on what often felt like a surreal bus ride through war-torn Syria. The video begins on the edge of the city of Aleppo, its western, government-held half. The area we drove through is all government held but has been intensely fought over, again and again, and has changed hands several times. The route we took connects the city to a key supply […]
