Okay, every topic that has even remotely to do with the middle east keeps getting more general news put into it which removes focus from the original topic.
As such, I'm creating this thread as a general middle east and north africa topic. That means anything to do with the Arab Spring, Israel or Palestine should be kept to those threads and anything to do with more generic news (for example, new Saudi regulations on the number of foreign workers or the Lebanese elections next year, etc.) should be posted here.
I hope the mods will find this a clear enough statement of intent to open the thread.
Mod edit: The Israel and Palestine thread
has been locked since October 2023. Discussion about Palestine and/or Israel remains off-topic for this thread.
Edited by Mrph1 on May 11th 2024 at 2:19:57 PM
clown on clown violence
i sniff ground crayons and cheeto dust
IISS article that the Gulf States do want to limit reliance on US dollars by using other currencies. However, most of them do realize that they're too entrenched to said currency to get out of it.
Cringe but free
The United Nations has already questioned Saudi Arabia about its troops opening fire on the migrants in an escalating pattern of attacks along its southern border with war-torn Yemen. Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press, but has previously denied its troops killed migrants. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who allegedly make tens of thousands of dollars a week smuggling migrants over the border, also did not respond to requests for comment.
Some 750,000 Ethiopians live in Saudi Arabia, with as many as 450,000 likely having entered the kingdom without authorization, according to 2022 statistics from the International Organization for Migration. The two-year civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region displaced tens of thousands of people.
Protests hit Druze city in Syria for fifth day
1. For five days, the city of As-Suwayda has been rocked by protests by it's Druze inhabitants.
2. The Druze protestors are demanding President Bashar Al-Assad's resignation due to worsening living conditions.
3. Damascus is avoiding esclating the situation. The Reuters articles mentions that As-Suwayda's Druze avoided the bloodshed from the civil war that started in 2014 but it oddly left out an ISIL-launched attack against the Druze in As-Suwayda five years ago.
4. Pro-government commentaters blame "The West" for causing the protests.
I'm sure Assad has a good idea that will be internationally agreed upon.
Edited by HallowHawk on Aug 25th 2023 at 10:27:04 AM
https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/4511646-russian-official-calls-damascus-expel-wagner-fighters
Asharq Al-Awsat reports that Russia is calling on Syria to kick out Wagner contractors.
Saudi Arabian Twitter user was executed for criticizing the government on Twitter.
To the surprise of no one since we know Elon Musk cozied up to them and they invested in his takeover of Twitter, so even when the person has [Checks Notes] Ten followers Elon will happily hand the data over so they can track down and execute the person.
Edited by OmegaRadiance on Aug 31st 2023 at 5:59:59 AM
Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
If you dig deeper into this, it turns out that this guy is the brother of a dissident who's fled abroad. Given how genuinely obscure his Twitter account is and thus how too little of a threat he is, I suspect that the dissident is the real target, and they're punishing his brother in his stead since they can't get to him directly.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Cringe but free
It doesn't seem that the guy has actually been executed, "only" sentenced to death – which doesn't exactly put him in a secure position, but could well be a pressure tactic to bring his brother home. Just saying.
Middle East Institute: A dangerous escalation in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor. Basically, fighting broke out recently between the SDF/YPG and one of its Arab tribal militias that played a key role in the Deir ez-Zor Military Council, with dozens killed on both sides. The outburst of violence allegedly came about after the SDF arrested a militia leader it had long-standing tensions with — which didn't exactly help the rocky relations between the YPG-dominated bloc (with its neutral-to-cooperative stance towards the Assad regime) and the many non-Kurdish factions under its umbrella, whom it mainly took in under US pressure and many of whom still harbour desire for armed resistance against the regime (aside from everyday issues like under-investment in non-Kurdish regions and the criminal conduct of various faction leaders).
Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 2nd 2023 at 4:05:19 AM
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
Najla al-Mangoush was dismissed from her Foreign Ministry post in Libya for making contact with her Israeli counterpart. She sought refuge in Turkey 'cause she's concerned someone will put a hit on her.
Professional Forum Ninja
Looks like it's up to over 1000 dead, according to the Moroccan Interior Ministry.
Oh, bother.
Apparently it is over 2000 now. (CNN link)
Shit.
Edited by M84 on Sep 9th 2023 at 11:51:17 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Professional Forum Ninja
And another disaster strikes Northern Africa, this time of the water type, 2000 confirmed dead, thousands more missing after Medicane Micheal strikes Libya and causes two dams to collapse due to the torrential rain.
Now they think it might be 5200+ fatalities...
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Wow that's terrible. How's the emergency response for the disasters going then?
i sniff ground crayons and cheeto dust
The floods were caused by failures of dams after a tropical storm hit. Somehow, I think the problem is less the crisis response and more that people didn't realize the danger that Daniel posed.
Possibly because we still don't bother calling them and tagging them as the tropical storms they are.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Here in Morocco, rescue efforts conducted by the army seem to be going at a reasonable rate, but some villages in the mountains have become isolated and unreachable by land.
The ministry of interior says that the number of people killed so far is 2901, and 5000 have been injured.
The problem is that winter is near, and thousands of poor people are now homeless. The king promised that those affected by the earthquake would be compensated, but we will see.
The public reaction was more positive, with thousands of volunteers going to hospitals to donate blood and offer help.
...................
As for Libya, I don't know how the rescue efforts are doing, just that one quarter of the city of Derna has been destroyed, with the local government saying that there are at least 2300 deaths and 7000 injured or missing.
Edited by jawal on Sep 12th 2023 at 6:33:56 PM
Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurt
There are fears that the Libyan death toll is up to 5200...
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
As well as +10,000 people still missing <rant about WMO slowness cut out>
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
According to the mayor of Derna, there are fears that as many as 20,000 people may have died in the catastrophic floods that hit the eastern region of Libya on Sunday.
Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurt
According to the Red Crescent, about 11,000 people are now known to have died in the catastrophic flooding that has hit Libya following Storm Daniel. Derna's mayor has warned that 20,000 people may have lost their lives. They need a TC warning centre and an actual functioning government, pronto.
According to local TV and social media in Morocco, the King has pledged that the affected families will receive 30,000 dirhams in aid ( 2900 dollars). Those whose houses partially collapsed will get 80,000 dirhams ( 7900 dollars) and 140,000 dirhams (13,800 dollars) for those whose homes collapsed completely.
I have no idea if those people will ever see that money, or if they do, how fast, but it will be helpful for the poorer villages if it comes true.
The number of victims did not rise more from the last post above , about 3000 dead and 5000 injured.
There were fears of more earthquacks or shockwaves in a 60-kilometer radius around Marrakech, but it is being 10 days, and nothing happened.
A link:
Edited by jawal on Sep 17th 2023 at 2:57:09 PM
Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurt
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
From I gathered, Derna's dams were already known for almost two decades to be in need of increasingly urgent maintenance. A Turkish company was contracted to do it during the late 2000s, but pulled out as a result of the civil war jeopardizing the workers' security, and declined to return and continue when asked later... though are also accusations that the authorities (which, post-Ghaddafi, lay with the Haftar regime after it liberated the city from Islamist terror groups) had stood by and done nothing. For the record, there was 2-million-plus budget allocated for the dams' maintenance, and only a small portion of it was "deducted" (it's unclear whether they had been spent on anything, rather than being embezzled).
Yet even if all went according to plan, the deluge from Storm Daniel would've exceeded those dams' capacity anyway; that said, the dams would've at least reduced the damage if they had been at peak condition.
Oh yeah, and there were conflicting orders from the authorities over whether to evacuate or shelter in place, even as the storm was hitting the city.
EDIT: ![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
You saw nothing. 
Edited by MarqFJA on Sep 22nd 2023 at 3:53:10 PM
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Yeah, this one looks like a "screw them both" case.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman