Vox Atlas

The Saudis and Iranians have never actually declared war on each other. Instead, they fight indirectly by supporting opposing sides in other countries and inciting conflicts. This is known as proxy warfare. And it’s had a devastating effect on the region. Countries, especially poor ones, can’t function if there are larger countries pulling strings within their borders. And that’s exactly what's happening in the Middle East. The Saudi-Iranian rivalry has become a fight over influence, and the whole region is a battlefield.

Saudi Arabia and the US have a partnership that's been in the making for over seven decades. It started after World War II and survived the Iranian Revolution, the Cold War, the Gulf War, September 11, and the proliferation of conflicts across the Middle East. This whole time, the US has been selling weapons to Saudi Arabia -- now its number one customer. Saudis bought bombs, tanks, guns, and planes over the years to defend themselves from various threats. The US supplied those weapons because the Saudi’s threats have usually been a threat to the US as well. Today, there's a shift in the relationship. Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen has created the worst humanitarian disaster in the world - and thrown the Middle East into chaos. The problem is, the Saudis are using US bombs to do it.

And the president is part of the problem. Vox Atlas: The Amazon is a three-part series about the world's largest rainforest, why it's in jeopardy, and the people trying to save it. Watch all three parts right here on YouTube. Brazil has over 900,000 indigenous people, most of whom live in the Amazon. After centuries of persecution, they were given extensive rights under a new Constitution in the 1980s, including the right to claim and win back their traditional lands. Since then, hundreds of indigenous lands have been demarcated and protected by the Brazilian government. But in the last few years, those lands have come under attack by landowners, ranchers, loggers, and farmers who want access to the resources inside these indigenous lands. And since Jair Bolsonaro became president, the number of invasions into indigenous lands has skyrocketed.

On September 27, 2020, explosions rocked the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. It’s a small, mountainous piece of land in the Caucasus, between Europe and Asia. For more than 30 years it’s been the center of a conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both countries claim the territory and have dug their armies in along its borders. These explosions were the start of another round of fighting. Since 1994, Nagorno-Karabakh has been controlled by Armenians, but in just a few weeks in 2020, Azerbaijani soldiers captured most of the region. Outgunned by advanced drones, Armenian forces had no choice but to retreat and finally agree to a ceasefire in early November.

And what it tells us about the EU.