The war the United States cannot allow to end In analysing foreign policy, no doubt the first mistake is to assume that policymakers know what they are doing. The recent announcement by the Pentagon that a new 30,000-strong 'border security' force is being trained in north-eastern Syria was immediately contradicted by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, for whom 'the entire situation has been mis-portrayed, mis-described, some people mis-spoke. We are not creating a border security…
A war is being waged in and on Syria. Protecting the people from the dictator is no more than the usual pretext for attacks on Middle Eastern countries.
Jeremy Salt The roots of the current middle-east conflict were laid long before Israel was founded. The last, best hope for a just peace is that the Israeli people will come to terms with the problematic history of Zionism.
A new caliphate in the Middle East. The Middle East now has its first caliph since the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924. Wearing black turban and robes, Abd al Bakr al Baghdadi proclaimed the establishment of an Islamic state, with himself as the Caliph Ibrahim. The scene was the central mosque in Mosul, captured in a lightning descent by forces led by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Now there is…
Identifying revolutionary potential in Syria is a false moveMuch of what Firas Massouh, Yoni Molad and Steve Pascoe write in response to my article is based on assumptions about how I think and how I frame events which have no relationship to how I do think or frame events. Let me deal with a few specific points in their critique, beginning with Syria. In no way did I suggest that Syria was an 'autonomous and…
