Global Geopolitics

In Syria, Life Goes On Despite Everything

By Eva Bartlett
On a weekday afternoon, the Old City of Damascus heaves with people, cars, motorcycles, bikes. Markets are crowded with locals bartering with merchants for the heaps of spices, flowery perfumes, clothing, and most things one needs, abundant in the Hamidiyah market.

Investor Treaties in Trouble

By Martin Khor
The tide is turning against investment treaties and free trade agreements that contain the controversial investor-state dispute system, which allows foreign investors to take up cases against host governments and claim compensation of up to billions of dollars.

Ukraine Crisis Puts Strain on Turkey-Russia Ties

By Dorian Jones

The deepening Ukrainian crisis is placing Turkey in a difficult diplomatic position. At stake for officials in Ankara are Turkey's commitments to its Western allies and its cultural kin, Crimean Tatars, against its economic and political relationship with Moscow.

New Gestures to Opposition Unlikely to Change U.S. Syria Policy

By Jim Lobe
Despite new gestures of support for the Syrian opposition, the administration of President Barack Obama is unlikely to change its longstanding policy of restraining U.S. involvement in the country’s more than three-year-old civil war, according to experts here.

Palestinians Take the Tough Path Towards Unity

By Khaled Alashqar
The nascent move for reconciliation between the Fatah party in the West Bank and Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip could change the balance in the Middle East – if it were to proceed and deliver as promised.

Sweden’s Elites More Loyal to NATO than to Their People

By Jan Oberg
Over the last 25-30 years Sweden’s military, security and foreign policy elites have changed Sweden’s policy 180 degrees.

Myanmar Media Still Not Fully Free

By Amantha Perera
Kyaw Kyaw Aung is just 22, but already has dark memories of days when information, sometimes of the mundane kind, could land you in a dark cell for a very long time in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian nation that was under military rule for decades.

Obama Visit Raises New Questions

By Kalinga Seneviratne
U.S. President Barack Obama’s weeklong visit to Asia was meant to reassure allies in the region of American support and re-engagement. But it raised Chinese hackles and failed to dispel doubts over his administration’s ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy.

With Refugees Comes Crime

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Blaming Afghan refugees for a surge in crime, Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has placed restrictions on the movement of those who do not possess legal documents to stay in the country.

Syrian Split Divides Christians

By Karlos Zurutuza
Malki Hana says his men are afraid of cameras. “Most of them are army defectors and they may easily get in trouble," says this commander of a mostly unknown armed group in Syria.

OP-ED: The Two-State Option is Dead: Time for New Thinking

By Emile Nakhleh
The recent suspension of the U.S. -engineered Israeli-Palestinian talks signals a much deeper reality than the immediate factors that caused it. The peace process and the two-state solution, which for years were on life support, are now dead.

Women Voters Win

By Abdullah Omeed
About a third of the voters in the Afghanistan presidential election were women. That still gives Afghan women a say in running the country, as never before.

Displaced and Disturbed in Pakistan

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Every night in his sleep, Rizwan Ahmed sees his sons being killed. “When he wakes up, he starts crying. He realises they are dead and it was the nightmare he has been having,” says Dr. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the psychiatrist treating him.

Philippines Bases Hopes on US, Controversially

By Richard Heydarian
Amid growing uncertainties over U.S. commitment to Asia, as multiple flashpoints in Eastern Europe and the Middle East continue to consume global attention, President Barack Obama took a long-awaited trip (Apr. 23-29) to Asia, where he visited leading allies in North- and Southeast Asia.

Governments Crushing Their Own

By Catherine Wilson
The global spectre of state violence against political dissent, with paramilitary law enforcement units advancing against citizens they are employed to protect in cities such as Cairo, Bangkok and Kiev is daily news. But in some developing countries, the police are being used to put down indigenous opposition to the alliance of state and corporate power over resource extraction.

Obama’s Half-Pivot to Asia

By John Feffer
President Barack Obama’s recent tour of Asia was an opportunity to reenergise his foreign policy after a series of setbacks in the global arena.

UAE Diplomatic Offensive in Latin America

By IPS Correspondents
The visit by United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to Uruguay, Paraguay and Peru brings to an end 10 days of unusually intense diplomatic activity by the Gulf nation in Latin America.

Why Are We Entering the Cold War Again?

By Roberto Savio
For weeks now, the mainstream media have been unanimously engaged in denouncing Vladimir Putin’s action in Crimea first and Ukraine now. The latest cover of The Economist depicts a bear swallowing Ukraine, with the title “Insatiable”.

Sri Lanka Prepares ‘Certificates of Absence’

By Amantha Perera
Five years after the end of a bloody and protracted civil war, Sri Lanka has begun its first survey of families of the missing in order to assess their needs.

Morocco Divided Over Equality

By Abderrahim El Ouali
Morocco stands divided over a proposal for equal inheritance rights for men and women: modernists see this as application of equality arising from the new constitution, and Islamists see in this a violation of Sharia law.

U.S. Calls Egypt’s Latest Mass Death Sentences “Unconscionable”

By Jim Lobe
Five days after approving the transfer of 10 Apache helicopters to aid Egypt’s “counter-terrorism” campaign in Sinai, the administration of President Barack Obama denounced as “unconscionable” the latest round of mass death sentences against members of the Muslim Brotherhood handed down by an Egyptian court Monday.
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