Away from the chaos of Europe’s borders, refugees are camped out in vast settlements close to their home countries and where restrictions on entrepreneurship are wasting talent and energy.
Showing loyalty to the King in Amman
Muhammad Hamed/Reuters
Thousands of Jordanians - including the country’s Queen Rania - took to the streets of the capital Amman February 6. They were protesting the burning alive of the Jordanian fighter pilot Moaz al-Kasabeh…
Civilians in Aleppo: not in the news.
EPA/Ali Mustafa
February 2015 has already seen some major developments in Syria’s four-year conflict. At the start of February, rebels launched more than 100 rockets into Damascus and the Assad regime fired mortars on…
There is division over whether immolation is permissible under Islamic law.
EPA
The killing of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh by Islamic State has been explained as an act of retaliation for the air campaign against it. But there have been many questions about whether immolation…
Safi al-Kassasbeh, father of Muath al-Kassasbeh, temporarily distracts a fickle media.
EPA
The latest atrocity committed by Islamic State – the burning to death of a captured Jordanian pilot – has dutifully been relayed to us in gory detail, with part of the media coming across as little more…
Jordanian students rally in support of Muath al-Kassasbeh.
EPA/STR
The execution of the Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh by Islamic State was both horrific and barbarous – and part of a well-calculated strategy. By killing this young man in this manner, and with maximum…
When a coalition of the willing was formed in September 2014 and bombing began against Daesh in Iraq and Syria, things appeared to be moving in the right direction. Daesh is more commonly known as Islamic…
The decision by President Obama to launch missile and air strikes against Islamic State (IS) and the al-Qaeda affiliate “Khorasan” in Syria draws the United States ever closer to yet another prolonged…
This is as far as you go: refugees arrive in Jordan.
EPA/STR
Swamped as we are with media outrage and political rhetoric about asylum seekers “invading” Europe, we tend to forget that the vast majority of displaced people find refuge in countries far beyond EU borders…
Prince Faisal and his party (including T E Lawrence) at Versailles, 1919.
Wikimedia Commons
The sweeping advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has given rise to a lively debate about who should bear ultimate responsibility for the disintegration of Iraq and Syria. On one hand…
ISIS appears to be attempting to recruit fighters from Europe via social media.
Twitter
The Sunni rebels in Iraq have made further gains, taking control of important border crossings with Syria and Jordan, the Rutba truck-stop on the main road from Baghdad to the Jordan border and two towns…
Tooth Hill Camp, 1918.
JB Winterburn. Source George Pascoe, 1918
A fantastic coincidence, coupled with research, led to my discovery of a wartime camp in the Jordan desert that was occupied in 1918. This was a camp used by T E Lawrence, or “Lawrence of Arabia”, and…
Millions of people are being displaced across the region.
Freedom House
It is about 100 years since the then-imperial powers of Britain and France first demarcated the boundaries between Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Mandate Palestine. Now, it looks like those borders are…
The grim cost of conflict.
Freedom House via Creative Commons
President Obama’s confirmation that the United States would begin arming Syrian rebels has prompted an urgent debate about both the legality and the effectiveness of the decision. The announcement, ahead…