Sports diplomacy is not a new practice and since ancient times, sporting events have been used as a vehicle for political goals. The Ancient Olympics in Greece, for example, allowed for dialogue, discussion, and peace between city-states that were otherwise continuously at war. However, since those times, the aims and
Professional football has been played in Aleppo for the first time since 2011 as Al-Ittihad beat local rivals Hurriya 2-1 in front of an excited crowd at Riayat al-Shabab Stadium, eagerly anticipating a return to normal life. After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, rebels held control of the
On January 21 2016, approximately 5,000 foreign troops, supplied by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), entered The Gambia with orders to remove President Yahya Jammeh from office after the December 1st, election. The election was unexpectedly won by property developer Adama Barrow with 45.5% of the vote while incumbent
Iraqi government special forces have successfully wrested Mosul University from Islamic State (IS) control, a significant victory in the push to expel the group from their last stronghold in the country. The university facilities were initially seized by IS in 2014 and the walled compound has since served as a
On 23 December 2016, the United Nations Security Council voted 14 with one abstention to declare Israel’s continued construction of settlements on the West Bank as inconsistent with international law and that for a two-state solution to succeed, the current policy must cease immediately. However, is it too little,
After days of negotiations, China has agreed to return an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) to the US, three days after it was captured in the South China Sea off the northwest coast of the Philippines. On December 15, a Chinese warship seized, what a Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman described
Two explosions, believed to have been a car bomb and a suicide bomb, have killed 29 people and injured 166 in Istanbul two hours after a football match between Besiktas and Bursaspor, two of Turkey’s biggest teams. Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, released a statement confirming casualties and declaring
On December 4, 2016, citizens of Uzbekistan will head to the polls to vote on a new leader for the first time after the death of incumbent President Islam Karimov on September 2 of this year. Karimov, Uzbekistan’s only president after its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, led
It has been a year since the adoption of the historic Iran nuclear deal by the P5 + 1 countries and Iran on October 18, 2015, which was followed by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on January 16, 2016. In the short term, the deal has been successful
Violent protests have flared up in Athens as President Barack Obama flies into the country as part of his final foreign trip in office. According to The Guardian, approximately 3,000 left-wing protestors took to the street to march against the neoliberal institutionalism imposed on the Greek government by international organizations,
At the end of the Korean War in 1953, the United States and South Korea signed a mutual defence treaty ensuring support should the territory of either state be attacked. In light of Donald Trump winning the 2016 U.S. Presidential election it is worth considering the current state of the treaty and its
Over the last few weeks, the optimism surrounding the October 8 local elections in Palestine has vanished. It was to be the first time the West Bank and the Gaza strip held simultaneous elections in, up to, 416 Palestinian cities. It was to be the first time Fatah and Hamas,
