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Jul 17, 2016
African farmers say they can feed the world, and we might soon need them to
Food exhibitions in the Mediterranean region tend to attract a familiar cast of characters. There are the Gulf Arab agribusinesses, looking to expand their reach, and the large-scale European farming…
May 29, 2016
How to run an international airport with jihadists on the doorstep
Running a Middle Eastern airport is fairly challenging at the best of times. There are the lovesick hijackers and the
Apr 22, 2016
The perfect recipe for making jihadis was developed in this small Iraqi town
No matter where you turn when covering ISIL’s two years of terror in Iraq and Syria, one name repeatedly crops up: Tal Afar.
Jan 31, 2016
The climate-change refugee crisis is only just beginning
The Amhara Plateau is no one’s idea of a gloomy landscape. Rich fields blossom as far as the eye can see; bountiful rivers zigzag through the region’s rolling hills. It isn’t hard to see why local…
Dec 11, 2015
The 21st-century gold rush where people work in 19th-century conditions
It’s a little before 7am on a bright, airless August morning, and already Abdullah Idriss Isaac has been hard at work for hours.
Swishing his aluminum pan back and forth through a waist-deep…
Aug 22, 2015
This small Turkish town grows a quarter of the world’s hazelnuts
ORDU, TURKEY—To lovers of hazelnuts, this small city on the Black Sea coast in far eastern Anatolia is nothing short of a garden of earthly delights.
Residents dispatch young children to schools…
Jun 1, 2015
Iraqis say ISIL’s impact on Baghdad food prices is even worse than its car bombs
BAGHDAD—Four years after US troops pulled out of the Iraqi capital, local merchants are once more cursing America.
“Look at these prices,” Abu Mustafa said, as he gestured at the mounds…
May 21, 2015
Iraq enlisted 100,000 militiamen to fight ISIL and now it can barely control them
BAGHDAD—With traffic on the Republic Bridge snarled up for half a mile and lunchtime fast approaching, the two pickup trucks chock full of armed men in desert camouflage decided they could stand the…
Apr 15, 2015
The Arab Spring’s best legacy: Egyptians are now reading once-banned books
In his 25 years manning a stall at Cairo’s storied Ezbekiya book market, Ali El Shaer has often had to revise his stock. When local students favored socialist treatises, he bought Karl Marx by the…