Another year has passed and another Ramadan season is upon us. For many Muslim countries, the Holy month of Ramadan is a festive period filled to the brim with traditions. While religious traditions, such as tarawih prayers and fasting, are shared across these countries, each one has different...
The Strait of Hormuz is strategically vital as most of the oil in the region is transferred to Europe, North America, and Asia via the waterway. Since the end of the Second World War, there have been multiple conflicts that have affected trade through the strait and have made Iran’s economic...
Illustration by Ali Mandalowi
1 - Born in 1957, Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf is a career military man who took over the country for just 24 hours on 11 April following the protests that ended President Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year reign. “I, the defense minister, chairman of the High Security Commi...
A former army chief, Abdelfattah el-Sisi stormed to the presidency at the 2014 polls winning 96.9 percent of the vote, a year after having led the military in ousting Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. Sisi was reelected in 2018, sweeping the poll with 97 percent of the ballots.
In early 2018,...
1 - Abdelaziz Bouteflika was born on March 2, 1937. Some biographers say Bouteflika was born in Tlemcen, western Algeria, and others give his place of birth as Oujda, just over the border in Morocco.
2 - In 1956, at the age of 19, Bouteflika fought in the 1954-1962 war to end French coloni...
Agnes Varda, the Belgian-born director who earned the title “grandmother of the French New Wave when she was barely 30 years old, died on March 19 at age 90, leaving behind her distinctive brand of wise and deeply personal masterpieces such as “Cléo from 5 to 7,” “Vagabond,” and “The Gleaners a...
JANUARY
With signs pointing to the civil war in Syria entering its final stages and Russian President Vladimir Putin declaring victory over ISIS there in December 2017, we took a look at the key actors positing themselves to take the lead in the future and post-war development of the ravaged...
