Five years after launching its much-criticised military intervention in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is stuck in a costly quagmire with no exit in sight while it grapples with multiple crises at home.

Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, the Sahel... with the great powers focused intently on the COVID-19 virus, will armed conflicts across the world decrease in severity or intensify? Experts as well as diplomats at the United Nations say there is a serious risk of the latter.  

In 2015, Ian Goldin, an Oxford University professor, warned in his book "The Butterfly Defect" about the risks of a global pandemic in a modern, interdependent world.

Syria's brutal conflict entered its 10th year Sunday with President Bashar al-Assad's regime consolidating its hold over a war-wracked country where foreign powers are flexing their muscle.

When Syrian anti-government demonstrators first took to the streets on March 15, 2011, they could scarcely have imagined their protests would turn into a complex war entangling rebels, jihadists and outside forces.

As 2019 gave way to 2020 in a cloud of tear gas, and in some cases a hail of bullets, from Hong Kong to Baghdad, from Beirut to Barcelona and Santiago, it seemed civil disobedience and government crackdowns on protests would dominate the international landscape.

Then came the coronavirus.

Italy closed all schools and universities and barred fans from all sporting events for the next few weeks, as governments trying to curb the spread of the coronavirus around the world resorted to increasingly sweeping measures that transformed the way people work, shop, pray and amuse themselves.

With the virus present in more than 80 countries, Saudi Arabia barred citizens from making the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Iran canceled Friday prayers for a second week, and leader after leader pleaded with citizens to put an end to that traditional symbol of mutual trust, the handshake.

Turkish news channels have been dominated this week by a steady stream of black-and-white drone footage showing the destruction of Syrian regime targets in rebel-held Idlib.

International experts are questioning the scale of the new coronavirus epidemic in Iran, where the official death toll is second only to China and risks creating a regional epicenter of contagion.

As the United States and the Taliban ready to sign a deal aimed at eventually getting America out of Afghanistan, here are some landmark events in the two-decade conflict:

As the men wearing long black coats approached, Shmuel, a lapsed member of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, lowered his head to avoid being recognised.