Koraki

Syrian journalist and activist Bahia al Mardini dismisses claims that Bashar al Assad has ‘won’ the war in Syria, and calls for democracy in her state, where she had, until being chased out in 2012, campaigned for the rights of political prisoners, many of whom were tortured in Assad’s prisons. She says: ‘Victory cannot be written in civilian blood: the conflict has already claimed up to half a million lives, left one million Syrian children orphaned and displaced half the pr

Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s Prime Minister, has withdrawn his resignation from the role. We have noted in some detail the situation surrounding Hariri’s resignation, but in short, Hariri resigned on 4 November, during a state visit to Saudi Arabia, on Saudi television. No-one in Lebanon had expected the resignation, and within his speech he directly criticised Hizbollah, saying: ‘Arabs… will chop off the hand of those who try to… interfere in and disrupt our lives.’ The statement

South Sudanese refugees in Uganda are reportedly ‘unanimous’ in their opinion that their state should immediately adopt a federal system, in order to prevent the unequal distribution of power and resources. They told a Ugandan/South Sudanese national dialogue committee on refugees and international outreach (part-run by the South Sudan National Peace Committee, which includes government ministers) that they want their nation split into three effectively autonomous regions - G

Refugees in Italy note that they had no real intention of coming to Europe, until they experienced the chaos in Libya, and realised they could not stay there. This has been a common factor in people’s decision to travel to the EU from Libya since the state’s first civil war began in February 2011. Though some of the people I met in the state, and in Tunisia, in 2011-12 – particularly those who travelled from the East of sub-Saharan Africa (those who made the journey through S

Crux, a Catholic news site, has become the latest commentator to call for the creation of ‘safe zones’ in Syria, which Syrian people currently in Lebanon could be returned to. This idea has been raised on a number of occasions, and even if we ignore Crux’s major argument (which is that the 1.5m Syrian refugees in Lebanon significantly reduces the percentage of the population which is Christian) and accept its second (and reasonable) one – that Lebanon’s infrastructure is stru

In an article for the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies, Lieutenant Colonel Dr Mordechai Kedar warns that Shias in Iraq and in Syria (where the Shia Iranian army is fighting alongside Assad, the Shia Hizbollah militia, and Shia militias from Iraq and Afghanistan) ‘may try’ to remove the Sunni Muslims from both states. While we may disagree with his view, there is nevertheless an important point underlying it. The Sunnis are the majority population in Syria, but Assad i