Rev'd Matthew Dumont-Machowski

Illustration: Matt Golding, The Age Qatar government‘s agricultural arm – Hassad Food – has recently secured a yet another land acquisition in Australia. As Qatar’s population is expected to grow to as much as 50 million people by 2050 (from only 813,000 in 2005) food security becomes one of the most striking future threats, for which Qatar has already started bracing itself. According to an article in the Australian The Age, Hassad Food has recently agreed to pay as much as $35…

I truly recommend watching this episode of ‘Empire’ by Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara – this time on modern Turkey, its foreign policies and the rule of the AK Party. Erdogan has recently won a landslide support in truly democratic elections. The Islamist party plays an extremely important role in contemporary Turkey and its impact is far more positive that many had expected. Turkey, with its culture-rich and extremely well-developed Istanbul, now looks not only to the West and East but…

This is an extremely impressive map of Israeli settlements in the West Bank indicating also the Separation Barrier. One does really need to praise the quality of work and the precision with which B’Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) created this map. Click here to download the complete, detailed map from B’Tselem.

Source: Der Spiegel International

One cannot miss the site of this amazing woman, Manal al-Sherif, who in defiance for the traditional rules of conduct in her native Saudi Arabia campaigns for the right of women to drive as part of her Women2drive initiative. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world, where both native and foreign women are totally prohibited from driving cars and must rely on either male relatives or professional drivers to use cars. Although no actual law forbidding female…

The Gulf region has proven to be one of the fastest developing areas in the world with enormous wealth and vast supplies of oil and gas.[1] It was, indeed, the emergence of oil that determined the virtual turning point in the history of the whole Arabian Peninsula. The previously tribal and poor lands of the Arabian Desert; historically populated mostly by the pearl divers, camel breeders and some local pirates; that until late 1930s had never even drawn much interest…

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Qatar’s Emir meeting  Israel’s PM Ehud Olmert in Paris, Jul 2008. Source: LIFE Qatar, the “rising start” of Middle Eastern diplomacy, has been engaged in its bilateral relations with the State of Israel for exactly 20 years now, since the former Emir Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani expressed his support for the Arab-Israeli peace conference in Madrid in 1991. Its bold commitment to actively engage in regional diplomacy and raise Qatar’s position internationally…

Dr Adam Hanieh, lecturer in the Department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and author of recent ‘Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States’ soon to be published by Palgrave Macmillan discusses the historical aspects of the plight of foreign migrant labour in the Arabian Gulf.  This is an incredibly interesting interview that sheds light on the abuse of migrant workers within the GCC. This issue remains still much of…

This incredible map was created by Gary Sick of the Gulf 2000 Initiative at the Columbia University. I have recently come across it on The Gulf Blog and found it very intriguing. I think it’s certainly worth sharing and will be of interest to all people interested in religions of the Middle East.

Water scarcity, although a relatively low priority, is still a concern for the Middle Eastern security agenda. Gulf states in particular can lead the way in ensuring that water co-operation replaces the threat of water conflict. By Matthew Machowski, RUSI Qatar (Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies) Across the Middle East and North Africa the Arab Spring revolutions have brought unprecedented changes to some of the world’s most enduring and entrenched regimes. Some citizens in the region…