News on politics, security and defence in the Middle East and North Africa
When Israeli premier Netanyahu makes reference to territorial compromise, he conspicuously avoids phrases such as “Palestinian State” or “two states for two peoples”. The vicissitudes of Arab-Israeli half-century-conflict seem to…
It is a difficult task to explain everything about the Middle East in a short article. So what I am going to do is to present an important, yet sometimes provocative series of headlines…
The bloodthirsty jihadist organization that calls itself Islamic State (IS) sprang from the loins of al-Qaeda, once the supreme bane of the western world, which achieved its apogee with the…
If Donald Trump becomes the next US president, the Americans will come to realize that Trump’s ill-conceived foreign policy agenda – hardly espoused and advocated by a wide spectrum of…
The name of the game is power politics. France was a major presence in the Middle East following the First World War, but has been on the retreat ever since,…
What about a man who beats his wife? What about a man who does not give his wife her rights? The law should do something about this too. Women in Saudi…
There is much to understand – but one way of approaching the refugee crisis is to think through the historical precedents, to consider whether they offer us pointers as to…
The on-going war in Syria and Iraq arrests the attention of the global powers and apparently much diplomatic struggle is being waged to handle the current crisis, which is readily…
The year 2016 is the 100th anniversary of the Irish Easter Rebellion. Throughout the year I will try to revisit some of the lessons of Ireland’s struggle for freedom. Bombs…
The layoffs followed last year’s collapse of a Bin Laden construction crane that killed 107 people and prompted the government to ban the brothers from travelling abroad as well as…