by Alistair Lyon | 6 Aug 2020 | Educators' Catalog, Middle East
Disaster was awaiting Lebanon, its finances in tatters. Now a huge chemical explosion has compounded the crushing challenges facing the tiny but pivotal nation. Beirut’s port after the explosion, 5 August 2020 (EPA-EFE/WAEL HAMZEH) It is hard to imagine a...
Students see headlines all day long and have a good sense of the big news events around the world. But when something happens far away, they don’t always understand why it matters to them, because they are young and also because harried real-time news outfits don’t always connect the dots. When a chemical explosion tore through Beirut in August, media organizations around the world flashed photographs, videos and headlines capturing the anguish and destruction. In 900 words, Alistair Lyon goes further, taking readers through Lebanon’s dire circumstances and explaining why it matters to all of us. No region of the world is more complex or more important than the Middle East, and Lyon — a former Middle East diplomatic correspondent for Reuters — offers an exemplary synthesis of the tangled forces at work in the volatile region.
by Alistair Lyon | 8 Jun 2020 | Middle East
Lebanon has largely dodged COVID-19. But its finances are in tatters — and so, too, its facade of prosperity. Disaster awaits. Anti-government protesters demonstrating against Lebanon’s economic and financial crisis, and to demand early parliamentary...
by Alistair Lyon | 8 Jan 2020 | Middle East, Politics, Religion
Iran has signaled a desire to avoid full-out war with the United States. But the conflict between the two nations remains, and Tehran has other options. Mourners attend the funeral for Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, Tehran, Iran, 6 January 2020 (Saeid...
by Alistair Lyon | 3 Sep 2019 | Human Rights, Islam, Middle East
The world’s worst humanitarian disaster is unfolding in Yemen, where outside powers stoke a civil war. Peace remains a distant dream. A Red Crescent staffer tries to pull a body from rubble at a detention center after it was hit by airstrikes in Dhamar, Yemen, 1...
by Alistair Lyon | 10 Dec 2018 | Human Rights, Middle East
Yemen is the poorest Arab nation, caught in the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. But can UN-brokered talks in Sweden stave off mass starvation? A malnourished boy rests on a hospital bed in Hajjah, Yemen, 1 October 2018 (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed United...
