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After the failure of talks on a mechanism to resume negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was announced Tuesday, a number of Egyptian experts and former ministers gave insight on the issue. Water Bomb Former Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Nasr Allam said in a TV interview that filling the dam's reservoir without a legal binding agreement may incur a famine in Egypt and Sudan. That is because the capacity of the dam is 74 billion cubic meters, which is almost equivalent to the annual water shares of Egypt (55.5 billion cubic meters) and Sudan (18...

UN says tribal clashes in Sudan’s Darfur kill 40 over 3 daysBy Samy Magdy | APApril 5, 2021 at 3:42 p.m. EDTCAIRO — Tribal clashes that erupted over the weekend between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan’s western Darfur region have killed at least 40 people and wounded around 60 others, the U.N. said Monday.The violence was between the Arab Rizeigat and the Masalit tribes in Genena, the provincial capital of West Darfur province. It happened after unknown armed men on Saturday shot dead two people from the Masalit, according to the U.N. humanitarian affairs agency.https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/medical-group-says-tribal-clashes-in-sudans-darfur-kill-18/2021/04/05/632a566c-9604-11eb-8f0a-3384cf4fb399_story.htmlClashes between Arabs, non-Arabs in Sudan...

Peter Lance's new book, Triple Cross, (the complete title is: Triple Cross, How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him) is out in bookstores on 11/21/2006. This is a link to the Able Danger Blog's review of the book. Here is the text of the Harper Collins' press release for the book: TRIPLE CROSS How Bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets and the FBI -- And Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him By Peter Lance In TRIPLE CROSS, five-time Emmy-award...

The tenth anniversary of the conflict in Syria that began on March 5, 2011 was greeted with deafening silence in Washington, D.C. Though the Biden administration would favor a political settlement of the conflict and is conscious of humanitarian problems of displaced civilians in the area of Idlib, it has not settled on any policy on Syria, which appears to rank relatively low on its list of global and regional priorities. At present, it has no intention of drawing another "red line" as the Obama administration did. In contrast, it comes as no surprise that the Russian Wagner Group, a...

President Biden’s unraveling of the Trump administration’s Middle East policy already is well underway, but a prominent elder statesmen is advising him to uphold his predecessor’s “brilliant” realignment of the region’s politics.Henry Kissinger, who was secretary of state under the Nixon and Ford administrations, praised Trump administration’s strategy of pitting major Sunni Muslim countries against Iran’s Shiite mullah-led regime, the Washington Free Beacon reported.“I think that one of the great successes of the previous administration was that they had lined up, that they had achieved two things in the Middle East,” Kissinger said Tuesday during the first seminar of a...

In a televised statement, a spokesman for the rebel group, Brig. Gen. Yahya Sarea, said ballistic missiles and drones hit the oil giant’s facilities in Ras Tanura, a major port on Saudi Arabia’s Persian Gulf coast and one of its largest refineries, and military positions in nearby Dammam. Saudi state media later confirmed the Ras Tanura attack, quoting an unnamed Energy Ministry official saying that one petroleum tank farm was attacked Sunday morning. The official said shrapnel from a ballistic missile fell near Aramco’s residential area in Dhahran, which hosts thousands of employees and their families, but there were no...

Answering questions from his audience on Zoom at a Likud event on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of two reasons four Arab states normalized ties with Israel in the past year, and more want to join them: the economic advantages of cooperating, and shared security aims. Netanyahu referred to his 2015 speech before both houses of the US Congress against the Iran deal: “During the speech, during the live broadcast, senior people from the Arab world called my people – I was still speaking – and they said: ‘We cannot believe what we are seeing... the daring of the...

We may be witnessing a major realignment of the Middle East. I was Googling around the other day for a factoid: how many Israelis had visited the United Arab Emirates since the signing of their normalization agreement, known as the Abraham Accords. Answer: more than 130,000.Jumping Jehoshaphat, Batman! In the middle of a global pandemic, at least 130,000 Israeli tourists and investors have flown to Dubai and Abu Dhabi since commercial air travel was established in mid-October!I believed from the start that the openings between Israel and the U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — forged by Jared Kushner and Donald...

A passenger plane was forced to return to the airport in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum after an angry cat, which somehow got into the cockpit, attacked the pilots shortly after takeoff, local media reports. This Wednesday's flight of the Sudanese Tarco airline bound for Qatar’s capital, Doha, was proceeding in a totally routine manner – that is, until a most unlikely passenger caused an emergency mid-air. Having departed from the Khartoum International Airport, the plane was in the air for roughly half an hour when an unregistered passenger was spotted inside the pilot’s cabin. The passenger in question was...

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article first appeared on JNS. Israel recently signed agreements establishing relations with four Muslim nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Both good and bad news surround this development. The bad news is bland and predictable: a permanent peace between Israel and its Muslim neighbors is, according to Islamic law, or sharia, impossible: any land that was once part of Dar al-Islam—that is, any land that was ever conquered by Muslims for any length of time—is always part of Islam and must be recovered by...

This is the lost city of Meroë in Sudan, with beautifully maintained pyramids as impressive as their more famous counterparts in Egypt. However, unlike the famed pyramids of Giza, the Sudanese site is largely deserted. The pyramids at Meroë, some 125 miles north of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, are rarely visited despite being a Unesco World Heritage site. Sanctions against the government of longtime President Omar al-Bashir over Sudan’s long-running internal conflicts limit its access to foreign aid and donations, while also hampering tourism.

NAIROBI, Kenya (Morning Star News) – Muslim extremists in Sudan who have burned down a church’s worship structure five times threatened to kill them if they put up another tent and continue worshipping, sources said. Police this month arrested nine of the 14 radical Muslims who burned down the temporary worship structures of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) in the Dar El-Salam area of Omdurman, across the Nile River from Khartoum, said the attorney representing the Christians, Shanbago Awad Mugadam. Saying they didn’t want a Christian presence in the area, the extremists have burned down the structures on Jan....

After 27 years as a global pariah, Sudan has been officially removed from the American State Sponsor of Terrorism list. The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum made the announcement in a Facebook post, saying that the statutory 45 days had lapsed since President Trump gave Congress notice of the administration's intent to delist Sudan, so the declaration could now come into effect. udan was first added to the list in 1993 after the United States said it had provided assistance to terrorist groups. The country gave safe haven to Osama Bin Laden and it was implicated in the twin bombings of...

Secretary General. Joined by 34 other countries, the document enshrines the Trump administration’s pro-life diplomacy on the official record of the General Assembly. “The United States strongly supports the dignity of all human beings and protecting life from the moment of conception throughout the lifespan,” Ambassador Kelly Craft wrote to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres transmitting the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family. Following the letter, the declaration was issued as an official document of the United Nations last week and circulated on December 11, after having been translated into all six official UN languages....

Russia plans to establish a military base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast to serve as a logistics center for the Russian navy, according to a draft agreement between Moscow and Khartoum signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and released publicly Nov. 11. The agreement states that Sudan will provide a land plot for the Russian base free of charge for a period of 25 years. It will automatically renew for subsequent 10-year periods. To terminate the deal, one of the parties must notify the other party of its intention at least one year before the expiration of the next...

The decision by three Arab states to make peace with Israel can be credited both to efforts by the Trump administration and the recognition by these Sunni states that their security would improve against the ongoing threats they face from Turkey and Iran. Iran and its proxies interfere with Arab states while promoting their Shi’ite revolutionary ideology; likewise, Turkey pushes its Sunni revolutionary ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region. Turkey and Iran look to overthrow the Sunni Arab states that do not align with them, such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The normalization deals between the...

Up to 200,000 refugees could pour into Sudan while fleeing the deadly conflict in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, officials say, while the first details are emerging of largely cut-off civilians under growing strain. Already at least 6,000 people have crossed the border. Long lines have appeared outside bread shops in the Tigray region, and supply-laden trucks are stranded at its borders, the United Nations humanitarian chief in the country told The Associated Press in an interview. "We want to have humanitarian access as soon as possible," Sajjad Mohammad Sajid said. "Fuel and food are needed urgently." Up to 2 million...

The message was clearly aimed at Gulf states and others that are partnered with the US. Iran has sought to reach out to its Arab neighbors, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warning them that US President Donald Trump will be leaving in 70 days, but Iran’s regime will remain “forever.” He urged them to realize that “betting on outsiders to provide security is never a good gamble.” In Arabic and English, he called for dialogue and to work together. The message was clearly aimed at Gulf states and others that are partnered with the US. Iran was offering them...

Israeli Settlements Minister Tzachi Hanegbi warns that a Biden presidency could ignite war in the Middle East, while Egypt fears Biden would aid the resurgence of Islamists in the region. Hanegbi pointed out that Biden has indicated he will resurrect America’s nuclear agreement with Iran which was cancelled by the Trump administration. For Israel, this would represent an existential threat to national security and drastically increase the chances of war with Tehran. “If Biden stays with that policy, there will, in the end, be a violent confrontation between Israel and Iran,” said Hanegbi. Meanwhile, other Middle Eastern countries such as...

Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister on Wednesday ordered the military to confront the country’s Tigray regional government after he accused it of a deadly attack on a military base, declaring “the last red line has been crossed” after months of alleged provocations. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s move against the well-armed Tigray People’s Liberation Front raised concerns that one of Africa’s most populous and powerful countries could plunge into civil war. That would send a shock wave through one of the world’s most turbulent regions, the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia’s neighbors include Somalia and Sudan, and the prospect of spreading...