LONDON: The contrast between the deaths, within two days of each other, of Libya's Col. Muammar Qaddafi and Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz is one of terminal buffoonery versus decadent gerontocracy. And their demise is likely to lead to (...)
LONDON: Saudi Arabia may not have been directly implicated in the conspiracy that killed more than 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, but it has been consumed in a conspiracy of silence ever since. The Kingdom remains in sullen denial of the fact (...)
LONDON: The old saying “lonely is the head that wears the crown” has literally taken on new meaning for Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. Not only has he watched close regional allies, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, be (...)
LONDON: The unexpected visibility and assertiveness of women in the revolutions unfolding across the Arab world — in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and elsewhere — has helped propel what has become variously known as the “Arab (...)
LONDON: Osama bin Laden's death in his Pakistani hiding place is like the removal of a tumor from the Muslim world. But aggressive follow-up therapy will be required to prevent the remaining Al-Qaeda cells from metastasizing by acquiring more (...)
LONDON: Ali Abdullah Saleh is finished as Yemen's president. Popular democratic protests that started on a small scale in mid-February outside Sanaa University have widened to encompass the whole country. The continuity and strength of the (...)
The revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen — and protests in Oman, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria — will all eventually result in a political solution. But influential outside actors, ranging from the United States and the (...)
LONDON: In his quest to stabilize his country, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, dressed in white robes, arrived in Mecca on what can only be called a diplomatic pilgrimage. Although Karzai undoubtedly spent time praying at Islam's holiest site, (...)
LONDON: Yemen has suddenly joined Afghanistan and Pakistan as a risk to global security. Indeed, it is increasingly seen as a nascent failed state and potential replacement host for Al-Qaeda.
The attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on (...)
LONDON: In a prominent hadith, the Prophet Mohamed said: "If disorder threatens, take refuge in Yemen. The Prophet was referring to the prosperous and civilized Yemen. But today disorder and radicalization in Yemen are beginning to infect Saudi (...)
BEIRUT: Almost undetected, Russia is regaining much of the influence that it lost in the Middle East after the Soviet Union collapsed. Ever since Russia invaded Georgia in August, Arab satellite television and Web sites have been rife with talk (...)
The recent meeting in the Vatican of the Custodian of The Holy Places, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Pope Benedict XVI was a seminal event, particularly as it comes at a time when radical Muslims are decrying the role of "crusaders in Middle (...)
It is now almost one year since the European Union committed to stabilize Lebanon following last summer's war. With its decision to send thousands of soldiers to Lebanon to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, the EU took its (...)
Having raised expectations for real political reform in Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has instead announced that the time for change has not yet arrived. After reshuffling the Cabinet, everything remains the same. The Saudi population, 50 percent of (...)
Doctors use the word "crisis to describe the point at which a patient either starts to recover or dies. President George W. Bush's Iraqi patient now seems to have reached that point. Most commentators appear to think that Bush's latest prescription (...)