Tag: Yemen

• June 28, 2015

  THE SAUDIS AND IRANIANS NEED TO TALK: AND WE NEED TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

  THE SAUDIS AND IRANIANS NEED TO TALK:

  AND WE NEED TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

   

  In recent years I have worked deeply on quiet conflict management interventions from Afghanistan to Iran, but mostly in Syria. I have watched the unnecessary suffering of countless people, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, the greatest civilian displacement in Middle Eastern history, and I have watched it up close through the lives of my students and friends.

   

  As an analyst my job is to study, inquire and reflect. Everything we conflict analysts, peace builders and trainers–Western, Muslim, Arab, Christian and Jewish–are learning from experience in the field, and from our students and friends all over the Middle East, is that we are caught in a deepening maelstrom of violent disasters due to the perpetual state of war between two states with radical philosophies that have been at loggerheads since 1979, Saudi …

• April 17, 2010

  Islam’s new kartinis – April – Nujood Ali

   

   

   “’Mabrouk! Congratulations!’

  Early morning light pours into the bedroom. In the distance, a rooster is crowing… Eyes wide, I look around at the disorder of the bedroom: the oil lamp has rolled over to the door, and the brown dress lies in a heap on the floor like an old dishrag. And there he is – what a wahesh – what a monster! On the rumpled sheet, I see a little streak of blood.
  

  ‘Congratulations!’ echoes my sister-in-law. With a sly smile, she studies the red stain. I can’t say a word. I feel paralyzed. Then my mother-in-law bends down to pick me up as if I were a package. Why didn’t she come earlier, when I needed her help? Now, in any case, it’s too late – unless she was his accomplice in what he just did to me?
  

  …’Mabrouk!’ both women say together…”

  Nujood Ali is just twelve …