Reportage
On the Kurdish Front Lines Against ISIS
The Islamic State may have been defeated in the field, but they have not been defeated in Iraq. What actually happened was that their fighters retreated from Mosul and Hawija, before slowly melting back into the Sunni Arab villages — and storing their weapons in the nearby caves — and prepared for war once again. What lies across from me are the most fanatical and hardcore: Those who have hung on, who refuse to surrender or flee. And they will stay there until they win or die.
Why Kurds Go to Europe
Just as in the rest of Iraq and the wider region, the Kurdish model has failed to resolve deep social, political and economic issues by mere nationalistic thinking and slogans. The ongoing mass Kurdish exodus to Europe through Belarus is a clear example of this failure.
As Murder Plagues Palestinian Towns in Israel, the Killers Are Rarely Caught
The pattern is painfully familiar — men, mostly young, are gunned down, often in broad daylight, in Palestinian towns or mixed cities inside Israel. Police rarely seem able to stop these crimes or catch their perpetrators. Many residents believe this inability to solve such crimes is an intentional act aimed at ensuring Palestinian communities are mired in crime and poverty, unable to fight for their civil rights and end state discrimination that has contributed to the gun violence epidemic plaguing these neighborhoods.
The Politics of a Fire Engine in Tunisia
A decade after the folks in Thala celebrated their first free and democratic election, all power in Tunisia has become centralized in the hands of President Kais Saied. Yet, paradoxically, Thala’s election organizers were not sad to see the Parliament go. It seems to be a testament to the widely perceived notion that what had manifested after the small successes of the Arab Spring was, in effect, a corrupt and ineffective Parliament, which hadn’t made a difference in people’s everyday lives.
Where the Russian Gulag Once Thrived, Life Remains Isolated
If anywhere is the end of the earth, it’s here — in every sense. Vorkuta is obscene. Obscene in its rape of the earth, its wanton waste of resources, its reckless poisoning of its own inhabitants and the planet. The very ground is doubly poisoned, both physically and karmically. It’s a historical crime scene and an ongoing ecological disaster zone. Tragedy is Vorkuta’s gravity. And it pulls you down, powerfully.
Artisanship Withers on the Vine in Lebanon
Traditional handicrafts have thrived across Lebanon since time immemorial. Nobody knows when Phoenicians began making blown-glass vases around Saida and Tyre. For centuries, master weavers have tended their looms in Baalbek; woodworkers have fashioned intricate tawleh boards in Beirut and Tripoli; and cutlery-makers have whittled ornate camel-bone handles in Jezzine.
Kabul University’s New Chancellor Promises an Updated Taliban Outlook
The new generation of Taliban are a product of their times: more open to the prospect of gradual social change than their forebears, yet politically more militant. Many of them played important roles in a war that killed tens of thousands of Afghans but, as they point out, they too lost friends and family along the way.