Author: Steven Sahiounie

By Ahmed AbdulKareem The country of Yemen, known in the medieval period as “Green Yemen,” is one of the most extensively terraced areas of the world. There, Yemeni farmers transformed rugged mountain slopes into terraces and built dams like the Great Marib, a structure whose history spans long enough that it was mentioned in the Quran. During the medieval period, Yemen had one of the widest ranges of agricultural crops in all of the Middle East.  Farhan Mohammed is one of the richest farmers in Qama’el, a rural village in the region of Baqim in northwestern Yemen. He owns 50 hectares…

By Andrew Korybko The interview that Russian Prime Minister Medevedev gave to the Bangkok Post during his recent visit to Thailand to attend the ASEAN Summit there served to remind everyone of Russia’s skepticism towards the US’ “Indo-Pacific” concept, which he believes reduces the bloc’s centrality in regional affairs and also unnecessarily pressures its members to depart from their historic position of non-alignment, though this stance shouldn’t be interpreted as signaling that Russia is against this strategy’s publicly proclaimed goals of free trade and improved regional connectivity. *** Keen observers were already aware that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov slammed the US’…

American troops heading towards the Iraqi border have been attacked from land held by Turkish-backed militants in Northern Syria, Russia’s Ministry of Defence has claimed. The attack comes amid a US withdrawal from the region. The convoy was traveling along the M4 motorway – which runs parallel to the Turkish border through land captured by Turkey during its anti-Kurdish ‘Peace Spring’ offensive last month – when it was attacked, the ministry reported on Sunday.The Americans were fired upon from “territory controlled by Pro-Turkish fighters” of the Syrian National Armies, the Russian statement read. Nobody was hurt in the incident.

On Friday, Trump said he “liked” Syria’s oil and that the US would be “keeping the oil,” with his remarks coming in the wake of a report by Russian military intelligence that the US military and CIA had teamed up with US oil companies and military contractors to illegally smuggle tens of millions of dollars of oil out of the war-torn country. Former Vice President and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden criticised Donald Trump over his Syria policy, saying it has only worked to strengthen Russia, Iran and Daesh (ISIS)* terrorists. “Leaving troops behind like [Trump’s] doing now –…

Following an international tour, President Jair Bolsonaro returned from the Middle East with a $10 billion investment pledge from Saudi Arabia. The amount, however, is 10 times lower than promised to India. Bolsonaro has signed agreements in the areas of visa granting, defense cooperation, cultural cooperation and strengthening bilateral investments with Saudi Arabia. The deals were one of the last chapters of an international agenda that also went through Japan, China, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund’s $10 billion investment in Brazil has not yet had a schedule or more details disclosed. However,…

At least six people are injured after a political argument outside a mall in Hong Kong spiraled into a violent knife attack, according to local media. The assailant was beaten by bystanders and is among those hurt. A tense political dispute is said to have broken out between the suspect and a group of people in CityPlaza mall in the Tai Koo district. A person then took a knife from a bag and assaulted several individuals. One of the victims was described as lying unconscious in a pool of blood, while others sustained only minor injuries. The assailant was stopped by…

BY ERIC ZUESSE Clear and convincing evidence will be presented here that, under U.S. President Barack Obama, the U.S. Government had a detailed plan, which was already active in June 2013, to take over Russia’s main naval base, which is in Sevastopol in Crimea, and to turn it into a U.S. naval base. There can now be no question that the war in Ukraine started, and resulted from, the U.S. Government’s plan to take over all of Ukraine, and especially to take over that Russian naval base, in Crimea, which then was in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine didn’t start at…

US forces evacuated their positions alongside Syrian Kurdish militia in northern Syria last month, shortly before Turkey started a military operation in the border area, but left several hundred troops behind in the war-torn country, with President Trump recently confirming that the US would be “keeping the oil.” The Syrian Arab News Agency has published footage it says shows US military vehicles leaving Syrian territory and being transferred into Iraq at the Al Waleed border crossing point. According to SANA, the convoy included a total of 55 vehicles. Syrian media reported that a column of US troops had crossed the…

Thousands of people in Lebanon have held a rally in support of President Michel Aoun, after more than two weeks of anti-government demonstrations that ultimately forced Prime Minister Saad Hariri to step down over a troubled economy. Supporters mostly rallied outside the presidential residence, the Baabda Palace, near the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Sunday to pay tribute to Aoun, 84, ahead of a rival rally planned in the capital to demand a complete overhaul of a political system allegedly beset by corruption. The supporters of the president, a retired general-turned-head of state, filled up a two-kilometer-long highway leading to the…

Yemeni army soldiers and fighters from allied Popular Committees have killed at least six Saudi soldiers during separate attacks in the kingdom’s southwestern border regions as part of their retaliatory raids against the Riyadh regime’s deadly campaign against their crisis-hit country. The Qatari al-Jazeera television news network reported that Yemeni forces and their allies fatally shot the troopers during different exchanges of fire over the past two days.’ Meanwhile, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the Chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Revolutionary Committee of Yemen, has sharply criticized Sudanese authorities for the participation of militiamen from the Northeast African country in the Saudi-led military aggression against Yemen.…