Afghanistan

• The Independent: As Nato quits Afghanistan, new violence threatens the country's presidential election (Emily Dugan, March 16)
• "Ibrahim, 52, is one of more than 600,000 people scattered from their homes by fighting and insecurity. With a presidential election three weeks away and Nato troops starting to wind down their presence ahead of complete withdrawal at the end of the year, violence in Afghanistan is increasing fast."
  

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Egypt

• Reuters: Egyptian militants outwit army in Sinai battlefield (March 16)
• "In a rare visit to eight villages in Northern Sinai last week, a Reuters reporter saw widespread destruction caused by army operations, but also found evidence that a few hundred militants are successfully playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Arab world's biggest army and are nowhere near defeat. It is increasingly difficult for foreign correspondents to openly enter conflict zones in the Sinai."
  

Iran

• New York Times: Deterioration in U.S.-Russian Relations May Disrupt Coming Talks With Iran (Alissa Rubin, March 17)
• "If Russia signals that its cooperation with the West has weakened, that will reduce pressure on Iran to make concessions, said experts knowledgeable about the talks, which began last month with three days of meetings involving senior diplomats from each of the governments involved. "
  

Libya

• The Guardian: Libya: a country on the brink (Editorial, March 18)
• "There can be few better symbols of Libya's post-Gaddafi trauma than the plight of the oil tanker Morning Glory. On 11 March, the North Korea-registered ship slipped out of the Libyan port of Es Sider during a storm and headed out into the Mediterranean. It was under the command of a group of rebels from Libya's most oil-rich region, Cyrenaica, who intended to sell its £20m cargo of crude to help fund an autonomous government."
  

• Financial Times: Libya pays the price for its post-Gaddafi mistakes (Borzou Daragahi, March 17)
• "Though it may not be on the verge of civil war or partition, oil-rich Libya is unravelling dangerously along regional and ideological lines, a process that astute observers say could have been stopped and may still be slowed."
  
• The Economist: Libya’s government: Sailing into troubled waters (March 15)
• "“OIL IS our strength”, declares a billboard campaign launched by Libya’s oil ministry. The advertising is meant to foster national pride in a country still riven with regional and tribal faultlines three years after the ousting of its dictator, Muammar Qaddafi. But in Libya’s restless eastern half, sometimes known as Cyrenaica, armed federalists are trying to make that slogan a political reality."
  

Syria

• Wall Street Journal: Syria Plans Presidential Elections in Summer (Sam Dagher, March 16)
• "Syria plans to hold presidential elections this summer in all areas under government control and President Bashar al-Assad will likely be one of several candidates to run, the minister of information said. Omran al Zoubi, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, offered the first confirmation that Syria would hold the vote and that it would be open to other candidates."
  
• Washington Post: On third anniversary of Syrian rebellion, Assad is steadily winning the war (Liz Sly, March 14)
• "The strategy is not new, but in recent months it has started to yield tangible progress in the form of slow but steady gains on several key fronts on the battlefield that call into question long-held perceptions of a stalemate. Most notably, the government has pushed the rebels back or squeezed them into isolated pockets in large swathes of the territory surrounding Damascus, diminishing prospects that the opposition will soon be in a position to seriously threaten the capital or topple the regime."
  
• Washington Post: In Syria, rebel with a cause (David Ignatius, March 14)
• "With the Ukraine crisis, any fleeting hope that the U.S. and Russia could soon broker a political settlement in Syria has vanished. The United States needs an alternate strategy for strengthening Syrian moderates who can resist both the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime and al-Qaeda extremists."