What is the condition of al-Qaida, and what are its prospects in 2011 and beyond? The movement commissions the well-regarded SWISH management agency to deliver a further independent evaluation, to which openDemocracy has exclusive access.
The casualties of 19th-century industrial disasters in northern England and tragedies in Bangladesh and Iraq today are connected by deep economic and political forces - and by an ethical understanding that stretches decades ahead.
A pattern of attacks in the United States and Europe by individual jihadists is deeply connected to both the effects and the perceptions of a decade's war across the greater middle east.
The hacked United States diplomatic missives reveal both the vast ambition and the new vulnerabilites of the world’s superpower.
Iran is again at the centre of international politics. Its diplomats are discussing their nuclear plans. Its nuclear specialists are being targeted in Tehran. Its Saudi neighbours are pleading with the Americans to bomb it. But most serious of all, the momentum behind an Israeli military assault o
The politicians and diplomats lead the summits and rule the airwaves. But a close look at the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict reveals that the United States military take the decisions.
The mid-term election results in the United States carry implications for Israel’s military plans towards Iran.
The signals of growing turbulence in a range of military environments - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and beyond - send a worrying message to Washington.
A number of initiatives around the world, for example in Bosnia and Guatemala, seeks to record the details of every victim of violent conflict. The new revelations of civilian deaths in Iraq could advance a project whose wider ambition is to change warfare itself.
The British government’s new defence strategy gestures towards the real security challenges of the 21st century while remaining locked overall in an outmoded vision. But the seeds of new thinking, beyond and even inside the state, will grow.
A series of developments across greater west Asia offers evidence of al-Qaida’s dispersed reality, continued energy and potential vulnerability.
Behind the escalation of United States cross-border raids into Pakistan and of Taliban attacks on coalition tanker-convoys lie the cold political reality of an unwinnable war.
