Tag Archives: border

The Deadly Golan Protests: Anti-Israel Eruption Gives Syria’s Regime a Welcome Diversion

When Syrian tanks and soldiers poured into the rebellious southern flashpoint city of Dara’a last month, the Twittersphere lit up with wry comments like “Hey army, that’s Dara’a, not the Golan!” mocking the fact that the same army shooting its own people hadn’t fired a bullet in decades to liberate the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 war and still the center of the long-simmering conflict between Israel and Syria. In fact, Damascus has long worked hard to ensure the strategic plateau remained one of the quietest border areas in the Middle East, branding the area a military zone and maintaining tight control.

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A Third Intifadeh? Deadly Nakba Protests Spark Fears of Israel-Lebanon Border Escalation

South Lebanon Sunday witnessed its deadliest day since the month-long Israel-Hizballah 2006 war when 10 Palestinian demonstrators were reported shot dead and another 112 wounded as Israeli troops opened fire on protests along the border fence. The casualties came as a massive crowd of Palestinians gathered at Maroun er Ras, a small hilltop village overlooking the border with Israel, to commemorate the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, when the state of Israel was established.

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AFGHANISTAN: Homage to Majesty

Not unto glamorous “Holy Russia” but into the drab, mechanized Soviet Union came last week the first Reigning Sovereign to enter Moscow since the days of Tsar Nicholas the Last. The visiting potentate was His Majesty, King Amanullah of Afghanistan, styled by his Moslem subjects, “The Peace of God.” Accompanied by his Queen, Thuraya, “The Starry One,” he is now completing a tour of the Occident which has taken him on state visits to Rome, Paris, Berlin, London and several smaller Capitals

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Escaping Assad: Syrians Bring Tales of Gunfire and Defiance

The women and children waited until early morning of April 28 and then they fled in their hundreds. Most of the Syrians walked the few short kilometers from their hometown of Tall Kalakh, a cluster of low-slung cream-colored homes scattered on a gently sloping hill, toward the sleepy Lebanese village of Al-Boqia’a just across the river that demarcates the border, a two-hour drive north of Beirut

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An Inside Look at the U.S.-Pakistan Feud Over Drones

For the past six weeks, Pakistan has echoed with ferocious opposition to the CIA’s covert drones program that targets al-Qaeda and Taliban militants hiding in the tribal areas along the Afghan border. Ever since Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani issued a rare and fiercely worded condemnation of a March 17 drone strike, his criticism of the U.S.

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Iran: Could the MEK Be Evicted from Camp Ashraf by Iraqi Military?

For years, Iraq’s increasingly pro-Iranian government has threatened to evict the 3,400 Iranian members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq , a fiercely anti-Tehran group, from its sprawling former military base at Camp Ashraf, some 40 miles from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, and 50 miles from the Iranian border. Despite the heated rhetoric, however, Baghdad has never fully articulated how it will uproot the exiles — who refuse to leave their decades-old enclave — beyond saying it will not forcibly do so

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