Author: Steven Sahiounie

Three people were killed as a result of protests in Iraq’s southern city of Nasiriyah, amid ongoing anti-government demonstrations throughout the country, media reported. According to the Al Arabiya news outlet, police forces used firearms to disperse protesters. On Saturday, US Vice President Mike Pence arrived unexpectedly in Iraq and discussed the situation with the Middle Eastern country’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi Muntafiki. Nationwide protests are sweeping across Iraq. People demand the ouster of the government, as well as economic reforms, better living conditions, social welfare and an end to corruption. As of now, the death toll from the protests has…

Iraqi border guards along the Iraqi-Syrian frontier have increased security measures to prevent Daesh* terrorists from finding their way into the country, INA reported. According to the INA news agency, Iraq is setting up defence structures along the border in the provinces of Nineveh and Anbar. On Friday, a regional representative of Iraqi Kurdistan, which occupies a part of northern Iraq, said that up to 20,000 Daesh fighters still remained in Iraq and Syria. In early November, the US news outlet NBC said that militants from the Daesh terrorist group, following their defeat in Syria, were moving across the border into northern Iraq to…

The latest round of demonstrations comes in response to a statement by former US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman, who said that “the demonstrations and the reactions to them by Lebanese leaders and institutions fortunately coincide with US interests”. Several dozen Lebanese citizens have over the weekend been protesting near the US Embassy in the capital city of Beirut to express their discontent at what they call US intervention in Lebanon’s internal affairs. The protesters were seen burning US and Israeli flags in front of the embassy. ​The demonstrators were also seen carrying placards that read “USA, mind your own business”…

The leader of Iraq’s Asaib Ahl al-Haq group, which is part of the country’s Popular Mobilization Forces or Hashd al-Sha’abi, says Washington and Tel Aviv are members of “a third party” that has been behind many deaths during the recent unrest. Qais al-Khazali told Dijlah TV, an Amman-based Iraqi satellite television channel, on Saturday that the committee set up to investigate the violence is merely an administrative body, and thus cannot identify the “third party” responsible for the killing of demonstrators. He stressed that “Israel and US have a great role in the third party.” Khazali further said the…

A child was killed and 17 other children were wounded when a landmine, left by the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, was detonated in a village in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr, state media say. Syria’s official news agency SANA said that the planted explosive device exploded as children were playing in a schoolyard at al-Taybeh Village on Sunday, adding that the victims were taken to a number of hospitals in the eponymous provincial capital. Dr. Issam al-Arfi, the assistant director of al-Assad Hospital, told SANA that a girl lost her life on the spot and other victims received wounds…

Steven Sahiounie, political commentator Recently, the author Jeff J. Brown interviewed the journalist Steven Sahiounie. The following is an edited and expanded version of the interview. 1. Steven, please tell us about yourself and how you ended up managing Mideast Discourse. Steven: I am a Syrian American, and grew up in Latakia, Syria, attended school there, and I came to Lebanon 4 years ago to study further. I began journalism in 2011 when the war on Syria started, and I felt I had to share the truth based on the facts on the ground. I have written articles in the…

Iraqi Kurds should rest assured that Washington is firmly backing them – just take it from VP Mike Pence, who made a surprise visit to Iraq weeks after his boss was dragged through the mud at home for abandoning Syrian Kurds. The US Vice President and his wife Karen showed up at the Al Asad Air Base some 185 km west of Baghdad to serve some Thanksgiving turkey to the troops. The unannounced visit then brought them to Erbil, the capital of the northern autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, for more interaction with the soldiers – and the Kurds.Pence did have a…

Earlier this month, the US announced that it would keep its military presence in Syria despite achieving its stated goal of defeating Daesh*. US Central Command chief General Kenneth McKenzie stated Saturday that some 500 US personnel still remained in eastern Syria in order to take part in the upcoming anti-Daesh operation in the region. US President Donald Trump announced early in October his intention to bring the US troops stationed in Syria “back home,” though weeks later the US announced they it would keep a small number of troops in the area to “protect the oil fields.” The decision was made amid another…

About 500 people and around 100 families have returned to their homes in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor Governorate under the supervision of Russian military police. Abdullah Sheikh Salahal, the local elder, told reporters that the operation to ensure their return lasted more than three months. “People submitted the lists to Syria’s Reconciliation Committee. They were checked in a computer database. It turned out that all of them are civilians,” TASS quoted him as saying. For his part, Deir ez-Zor Governor Abdul Majeed al-Kawakibi added that “thanks to Russia, more than 15,000 people have returned to their homes over the past two…

Nearly a dozen people have lost their lives when a powerful car bomb explosion ripped through a northern Syrian border town seized by Turkish military forces and their allied militants in the aftermath of a cross-border incursion against militants from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Witnesses and a rescuer said a car rigged with explosives went off in Tal Abyad, located about 500 kilometers (310 miles) northeast of the capital Damascus, on Saturday, leaving people ten people dead. The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at nine, saying two children were among those killed…