Widow Shah Jan sits in an icy room with mud walls in a snowfield on the edge of Kabul. She wipes her tears with the edge of her grimy sweater as she recalls the day in August 1999 when the Taliban set fire to her home in the vineyards of the Shomali Plain and kidnapped her best friend, Nafiza. "The Taliban burst in with their guns and torches," says Shah Jan. "None of us even had time to put on ...

Ever since the end of the cold War, the U.S. has been the dominant and unrivaled power in the Middle East. That situation is changing, not because another great power is entering the region but because the Arabs are becoming more independent, unlikely to ally themselves submissively to any outside patron. Egypt's decision to establish relations with Iran and Hamas is one part of this trend. Washington cannot change it, nor should it try. This is the ...

Wael Ghonim is talkative and confident, just like many in the new generation of Arabs who are out to change their world — and prosper in it — by way of technology. He once pointed out that Norway, so much smaller than the Middle East in population, had more indigenous language content on the Web. There was so much room to grow. "We live in a digital age, and it is important that the Arab world takes ...

More than 1,000 police officers were deployed to the southern Israeli Bedouin town of Rahat on Sunday morning as two dozen Jewish right-wing extremists protested what they said was unlawful Arab construction on neighboring hilltops. Several hundred Bedouin residents who are Israeli citizens held a counter-demonstration in the center of town. About 25 protesters arrived in two buses under police presence. They were allowed to march a short distance, as police on horseback and in a helicopter hovered around. ...

Bombings in Iraq on Wednesday killed at least 19 people and wounded 58, mainly around Nineveh province, where political tensions have recently flared between Arabs and Kurds.