Perhaps nowhere in the region outside of Syria is more anxious about a possible US strike on that country than Lebanon. Out of all of Syria's neighbours, Lebanon has endured the most problems thrown up by the Syrian crisis, and is bracing itself for (...)
Weeks before the twin explosions that hit Tripoli Friday, leaving 45 dead and hundreds injured, Lebanese army chief Jean Qahwaji disclosed that army intelligence was tracking down what he described as “terrorist cells” that plot to plant bombs in (...)
When the head of Lebanon's Free Patriotic Movement, Christian leader Michael Aoun, a political ally of Hizbullah, was asked whether the second car bombing that hit Beirut's southern suburbs last Thursday, killing 27 people and leaving scores (...)
The guard in black standing at the entrance to the Thursday market in Bint Jbeil murmurs into his walkie-talkie. For frequent goers to Souq Al-Khamis, the scene was unfamiliar. It reflects growing concerns and fears, following the bombing in the (...)
In the first week of March, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Asir called on his supporters to participate in “the battle of dignity” by organising a sit-in in front of the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah's offices located a few blocks away from his mosque at Belal Bin (...)
While battles continue unabated between the Syrian army and armed opposition groups across Syria, a parallel battle is taking place on the pages of Arab dailies over the crisis and Hizbullah's role in Syrian conflict.
The division among Arab (...)
Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, has an insightful reading of how things are unfolding in Syria. “This is much more than a crisis,” Paul Salem told Al-Ahram Weekly in his office in downtown Beirut. “What is (...)
On Sunday, 26 May, a Syrian opposition group called the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) in Aleppo issued a statement in which it threatened to transfer the battlefield into Lebanon in response to Hizbullah fighting in Al-Qusair. The RMC threat (...)
A few weeks ago, Saleh Al-Sabbagh, from Sayroub in Saidon, joined the ranks of fighters in Al-Qusair, the strategic border town which — for two weeks now — has been witnessing the fiercest battles between the Syrian army supported by Hizbullah and (...)
The road leading up to the Iranian Garden (Al-Hadeeqa Al-Iraniya) located on top of mountain Maroun Araas in Bint Jbeil is adorned on both sides by newly constructed houses replacing those destroyed by the last Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006. On the (...)
In 2010, a summit was held in Damascus that brought together Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The slogan under which the three leaders met was “All for one.” (...)
“National Security officers still perceive Islamists — be they Salafis, the Brotherhood or Jihadists — as a threat to national security. They, the officers, think of themselves as the only guardian of homeland security and that they are the only (...)
When Mohamed Ibrahim, secretary-general of the Salafist Al-Hayaa Al-Shareya lel-Houkouk wal-Islah (the legal body for rights and reform), was asked on TV whether or not Islamists have directed their energies to the political realm at the expense of (...)
When Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad threatened in a recent TV interview aired Thursday, 18 April, that the war in Syria would extend to other parts of the region, and which will pay a heavy price for the chaos that is becoming Syria, few in Jordan (...)
When prominent Syrian thinker Sadek Jalal Al-Azm was asked in a recent interview about what future awaits Syria, he expressed concern about “political Islam” because “it could lead to reproducing the same despotic military regime but with a (...)
When former prime minister Najib Mikati announced his long-delayed government in January 2011 it was described by antagonists as “a Hizbullah government”, although the Islamic resistance's political wing had two ministers in it only. Mikati's (...)
The routine news coming out of Syria about daily death tolls was recently overshadowed by footage of the newly appointed prime minister of the provisional government, Ghassan Hitto, touring the so-called liberated areas no longer under regime (...)
Yet another orgy of violence has left the public perplexed. Last Friday's round of violence and counter-violence during protests in front of the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Muqattam was followed by the now customary exchange of blame as to (...)
A day before Moez Al-Khatib, former head of the National Coalition of the Syrian Opposition in exile, announced his resignation from the post, he made a statement to the Saudi-financed Al-Hayat newspaper suggesting that the Syrian armed opposition (...)
“What is going on in the kingdom,” asked Jamil Al-Zayabi, a columnist in the Saudi daily Al-Hayat recently. Why, he continued, in a supposedly rich country are “people poor, youth unemployed, and the state apparently incapable of addressing chronic (...)
On 26 February, Mai Al-Talak joined a group of women in the central city of Buraidah to protest against the detention of her husband Abdel-Malek Al-Mukbel for 13 years without due process. Another woman protester, Tahani Al-Razni, was protesting (...)
Eight months after the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate became president Egypt's oldest Islamist organisation is facing unremitting criticism of its political performance. Critics charge that the group lacks not only the strategy but the political (...)
Hours after the Salafist Nour Party announced it would be contesting parliamentary elections scheduled to begin on 22 April its spokesperson, Nader Bakkar, ruled out the possibility it would ally itself with the Muslim Brotherhood and its political (...)
A week of marathon meetings and mediation efforts to bridge the gap between President Mohamed Morsi and his political opponents has yielded little, if any, results. News of meetings between political rivals to hammer out topics of dialogue has been (...)
Under the old regime a handful of factors defined Egypt's foreign policy. They included the intimate relationship with the triangle of Tel Aviv, Washington and the Gulf states, hostility towards Iran and a freeze in Egypt's African relations. It is (...)