On January 31, Harith al-Nadhari, a senior al-Qaeda figure who praised the Charlie Hebdo attackers, was killed by a US drone strike. This is the first drone strike in Yemen for a number of weeks, and it…
February 2015 has already seen some major developments in Syria’s four-year conflict. At the start of February, rebels launched more than 100 rockets into Damascus and the Assad regime fired mortars on…
The United States’ reluctance to become decisively committed to the complex quagmire in Syria is understandable. However, its plan to insert a US-trained-and-equipped “moderate rebel” force into the mix…
Ever since its unification as a nation state in 1932, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been an oil-dominated economy. Most improvements and setbacks in its economic and social indicators can be invariably…
International politics is no place for starry-eyed idealists at the best of times. But this week the leaders of what we used to know as the “free world” in the dark days of the Cold War have plumbed new…
On the evening of January 22 2015, King Abdullah, the 90-year-old ruler of Saudi Arabia, died. The announcement that the 79-year-old Salman al-Saud is to become king was unsurprising, but given his health…
The passing of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will change little in the kingdom and its relations with the West. The monarch had been ailing and reclusive for some years and his anointed successor (and…
2015 began with Palestinian leaders having submitted the paperwork to become signatories to the Rome Statute, the document that governs the International Criminal Court (ICC). Last week, United Nations…
Since 2011, more than 3.2m Syrians are known to have taken refuge in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and a number of other countries. The real scale of the crisis is likely to be much greater, as not all refugees…
As the dust settles on a series of terrorist attacks in France, people will now look to understand the broader players of this grim drama. From their own statements and from external sources, it appears…
Let’s face it: once a term laden with hope for the Middle East, the idea of an “Arab Spring” has become merely depressing. Assorted humanitarian disasters have followed in its wake – think of the unspeakable…
The mess in the Middle East is forcing states into actions that previously appeared unimaginable. Sworn enemies are suspending or at least compartmentalising grievances. The idea that an American secretary…
Israel’s Knesset has voted to dissolve itself, and a general election is due to be held on March 17 2015. Binyamin Netanyahu’s third government was a fractious one from the start, with many coalition members…
Escalating confrontations in Jerusalem centred on the al-Aqsa Mosque, 1500 more homes to be built in settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and a sharp deterioration in Israel’s relations with Jordan have…
The Shia militant group Hezbollah has suggested its fight against Islamic State has given it a common purpose with the West. In an interview with the BBC, Mohammed Fneish, a Lebanese Hezbollah minister…
To explain the disaster befalling Iraq, as well as the rise of Islamic State (IS), you have to go back a century – before modern Iraq even existed. That’s not to discount the shared culpability of Iraq’s…
A specter continues to haunt the Arab world – the specter of regionalism. The idea that illogical national boundaries, drawn by colonial overlords divided what should have been a pan-Arab region has been…
Egypt’s new academic year started in early October amid unprecedented repressive measures by the state against students. On October 11, the morning of the first day of university, police carried out a…
The dreadful events in Iraq and Syria and counter-terrorism raids in Australia have alarmed Australians, including the 500,000-strong Muslim community. These incidents represent a new episode of the “third…
There are two reasons why we should ignore the growing calls in the United States, Canada and Australia for Western “boots on ground” – meaning ground troops – to fight and destroy the Islamic State (IS…