Bangladesh's modern experience of industrial disaster highlights the fragile conditions in which many of its urban workforce toil. But the country has an earlier history of large-scale developmental ambition, far from the metropolis, which equally defined the lives of those involved. The trajectory of these "ruins of progress", says Delwar Hussain, can illuminate the challenges of the present.

The Arab awakening has eroded Israel's sense of regional security. Now Syria's civil war presents Israel with both urgent risks and impossible choices.

Abuja's response to Boko Haram's insurgency is flawed and self-defeating. Without a change of policy, Nigeria will move ever closer to becoming a centre of transational jihadist struggle. 

The dispersal of the al-Qaida idea across many national territories takes some pressure off the "far enemy", the United States. But developments in Nigeria could represent a new danger for Washington and its allies.

There are intense efforts to portray western policy in Afghanistan in a benign light. But evidence from the country itself, and the experiences of Iraq and Libya, suggest that hard questions should be asked about what is really happening. 

The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is at the heart of Syria's destructive stalemate. This proxy conflict, with Baghdad providing crucial help to Tehran, highlights the scale of the blowback from the United States's war in Iraq.

The story of how an Afghan dam was planned, prepared, fought over and now abandoned symbolises the epic failure of the "war on terror".

The neglected experience of family members swept up into the vast detention-and-data-collection systems of the post-9/11 decade is illuminated in a valuable new book.

The prospect of a chaotic endgame in Syria and more instability in Egypt is leading Israel further in the direction of a "fortress-state". This military entrenchment reflects not strength but vulnerability.