Opinion

The Syrian government’s admission in early December that the actual rate of unemployment in the country was anywhere between 22 percent and 30 percent testifies to the depth of the …

There’s nothing like free and fair elections for finding out what people really think, and the big surprise of the Egyptian elections, the first since the overthrow of President Hosni …

It is perhaps a cliché to say history repeats itself, yet this saying seems to have held true over the past year in the Middle East, particularly in Bahrain. Uprisings …

Arabs across the Middle East and North Africa took action for social, political and economic change in 2011; the Lebanese, meanwhile, largely stood silently by as their country continued to …

The past 12 months have been devastating for Syria’s economy. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has contracted by several percentage points (possibly by as much as 20 percent), the foreign currency …

The year 2011 began with a great deal of uncertainty — perhaps even promise — for the Palestinians. Much of that had to do with the revolutionary fervor that had taken …

The tumultuous start to 2011 with the collapse of the Saad Hariri government in Lebanon and the establishment, after several months of hard bargaining, of a new administration headed by …

Iran’s rulers, since Pahlavi times, have been attracted by the ‘Big Plan’, and in modern days this is as true as ever. The Islamic Republic’s five-year plans guide its governments, …

In ancient times, what is now Yemen was given the name Arabia Felix — or “Happy Arabia” — by the Romans. But in modern times, it has enjoyed such a …

In theory, not to mention in several hundred acres of newsprint, 2011 was the year Turkey’s foreign policy fell apart. The tabloid version of the ‘zero problems with the neighbors’ …