Qatar

Qatari poet Mohammad Al-Ajami sentenced to life in prison

by News Sources 11.29.2012

Doha News reports: Qatari poet Mohammad Ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami has reportedly been sentenced to life in prison in a local court this morning. It remains unclear what Al-Ajami was convicted of, but he was arrested in Doha last November and eventually charged with “inciting to overthrow the regime” and “insulting the Emir.” Amnesty International, which [...]

Read the full article →

The Qatar conundrum: The emirate that arms Syria’s rebels also embraces Hamas

by News Sources 10.26.2012

Tony Karon writes: Mindful of its declining appetite for projecting power in the Middle East, the U.S. is relying on more activist partners in the region such Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to arm the Syrian rebellion. But Tuesday’s visit to Gaza by Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani — to the delight of the [...]

Read the full article →

Video: The plight of Qatar’s migrant workers

by News Sources 06.14.2012
Read the full article →

Blogger, Rami al-Jarrah, describes his escape from Syria

by News Sources 12.12.2011

Rami al-Jarrah, who was blogging and tweeting from Syria under the pseudonym “Alexander Page,” just fled the country after his real identity became known to the intelligence services. Upon his arrival in Qatar he almost got sent back to Syria but thanks to a swift outpouring of support on Twitter, he was allowed in.

Read the full article →

Jordan seeks Palestinian respect by offering Hamas a new home

by News Sources 11.23.2011

Zvi Bar’el reports: Jordan’s King Abdullah is not an innovative leader. But last week he surprised Arab leaders and the whole world by becoming the first Arab ruler to call on Syrian President Bashar Assad to resign. “If I were in his shoes, I’d step down,” he told the BBC. This declaration set off a [...]

Read the full article →

Syria: Arab League suspension threat illegal

by News Sources 11.14.2011

Al Jazeera reports: Syria’s foreign minister has condemned the Arab League’s threat to suspend the country over its crackdown on protests, saying the move would be “illegal” and a “dangerous step”. “The suspension of the Arab League membership is illegal,” Walid al-Muallem told a press conference in Damascus on Monday. Al-Muallem also criticised the Cairo-based [...]

Read the full article →

Qatar, Al Jazeera and the Middle East

by News Sources 03.26.2011
Read the full article →

Military assets in battle for Libya

by News Sources 03.20.2011

After numerous statements from officials and military experts on how difficult and time consuming it would be to put a no-fly zone in state, the Pentagon now says that it’s already effectively been put in place.

Read the full article →

Bahrain regime promoting sectarian division

by News Sources 03.16.2011

Marc Lynch writes: While the American and international debate over Libya continues, the situation in Bahrain has just taken a sharp turn for the worse. A brutal crackdown on the protestors followed the controversial entry of security forces from Saudi Arabia and three other GCC states. Media access has been curtailed, with journalists finding it [...]

Read the full article →

The shifting sands of state power in the Middle East

by Paul Woodward 06.30.2010

In The Washington Quarterly, Alastair Crooke writes: In his commendably candid interview with Time in January 2010, President Barack Obama noted that managing politics in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict “is just really hard.” The president, however, might well have been speaking about the Middle East as a whole. It is not just the Israeli-Palestinian track that [...]

Read the full article →

NEWS & OPINION: Saudi Arabia silences its critics

by Paul Woodward 01.04.2008

Al Jazeera no longer nips at Saudis By Robert F. Worth, New York Times, January 4, 2008 “The gulf nations now feel they are all in the same boat, because of the threat of Iran, and the chaos of Iraq and America’s weakness,” said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in [...]

Read the full article →