Middle East

The capture of a Saudi oil tanker by Somali pirates has focused attention on the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. This year's spike in pirate attacks is not just a reflection of Somalia's chronic instability, it's also symptomatic of an unstable region. An illegal economy is flourishing in the Gulf of Aden, with smugglers trading weapons, fuel and people between the Horn of Africa and Arabia.

Firas Majeed is one of the more than one million Iraqi refugees living in Syria. He left his family's home in Baghdad in 2005 to escape the violence that continues to plague Iraq. He made the decision to leave Iraqi for an uncertain future in Jordan after the militia that controlled the neighborhood he was living in demanded he join them.

Muqtada al-Sadr and his armed group, the al-Mahdi army, have been America's most intractable opponents in Iraq, the only major Shia party to make the demand for US troops to withdraw.

For five years, they have controlled large sections of the country, they have also defied attempts to marginalise them politically, and have fought pitched battles with US Marines. Despite all this, al-Sadr's al-Mahdi army has only grown in size and influence.

After two years of campaigning, the US Presidential race enters its final week, and for the most of those two years, Iraq looked like an unwinnable war.

The so-called surge strategy adopted by George Bush, the outgoing president, deployed 30,000 additional US troops to Iraq in 2007 and has dominated, much of the debate about the war.

Both this year's presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, have praised it as a huge success.

McCain even cites his early support of the surge as his most important foreign policy credential.

Muqtada al-Sadr and his armed group, the al-Mahdi army, have been America's most intractable opponents in Iraq, the only major Shia party to make the demand for US troops to withdraw.

For five years, they have controlled large sections of the country, they have also defied attempts to marginalise them politically, and have fought pitched battles with US Marines. Despite all this, al-Sadr's al-Mahdi army has only grown in size and influence.

After two years of campaigning, the US Presidential race enters its final week, and for the most of those two years, Iraq looked like an unwinnable war.

The so-called surge strategy adopted by George Bush, the outgoing president, deployed 30,000 additional US troops to Iraq in 2007 and has dominated, much of the debate about the war.

Both this year's presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, have praised it as a huge success.

McCain even cites his early support of the surge as his most important foreign policy credential.

It may seem hard to imagine a place where people incarcerated by the US military have fewer rights than they do in Guantánamo Bay.

Welcome to Iraq.

Ali approaches me at a Friday prayer service in Sadr City. He wants to talk. A U.S. missile, he says, hit his house in May and killed his two sisters and badly wounded his mother. He is a member of the Mahdi militia and can no longer return home for fear the Iraqi army will arrest him. He is careful not to be seen talking to me, since unauthorized contact between us could get him in serious trouble with the militia. We quickly arrange to meet a few hours later at my hotel, and then he shakes my hand and walks away, disappearing again in the crowd of thousands of worshippers.

Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC

Iraqi lawmakers are seeking $4 billion in next year's national budget to assist the more than 4 million Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons.

Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC

There is broad agreement that the arrival of more than 1 million Iraqis has taxed the water supply in Syria, burdened the public education and health care systems and driven up housing prices.

Imad Moustapha worries that their presence is exacting another cost.

The day I was stoned in public happened to be my birthday.

I was walking along a quiet side street, close to the parliament building in Yemen's capital, Sanaa.

I was alone, but I did not think twice when a battered old pick-up truck drove towards me.

It was just like hundreds of other pick-up trucks that I saw every day in Yemen. There were two tribesmen in the driver's cabin and a handful of young men standing in the flat-bed, holding onto the side rails to keep upright.