West Asia

New coalitions of women are shaping the future of activism and gender equality in the Gaza Strip.

This past Friday in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province, Hazara girls joined young Pashto boys to sing Afghanistan’s national anthem as a welcome to Pashto men walking 400 miles from Helmand to Kabul. The walkers are calling on warring parties in Afghanistan to end the war. It seems likely that ordinary Afghans, no matter their tribal lineages, share a profound desire to end forty years of war. The 17-year U.S. war in Afghanistan exceeds the lifetimes of the youngsters in Ghazni who greeted the peace walkers.

It is often argued that Israel is an Occupier that has violated the rules of Occupation as stated in international law. This would have been the case a year, two or five years after the original Occupation had taken place, but not 51 years later. Since then, the Occupation has turned into long-term colonization.

On May 12, 2018, Muqtada al-Sadr’s list unexpectedly won a plurality in the Iraqi legislative elections. This event shook up the entire political situation in the Middle East. It was greeted in other countries with expressions both of surprise and of dismay – notably in the unusual parallel reactions of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

On February 20, 2018, I embarked on a global book tour that has, thus far, taken me to eight nations. The main theme of all my talks in various cultural, academic and media platforms was the pressing need to refocus the discussion on Palestine on the struggle, aspirations and history of the Palestinian people. But, interacting with hundreds of people and being exposed to multiple media environments in both mainstream and alternative media, I also learned much about the changing political mood on Palestine in the western world.

Three years of U.S.-supported blockades and bombardments have plunged the Yemen into immiseration and chaos. “Civilians, including children, were killed and maimed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said João Martins, Doctors Without Borders head of mission in Yemen. "We are seeing civilian victims of airstrikes fighting for their lives in hospitals.” Lacking access to food, clean water, medicine and fuel, over 400,000 Yemeni children are at imminent risk of starvation.