Iraq’s Sunnis have become increasingly alienated from its Shia-dominated government. Al-Qaeda has been able to profit from its inability to offer cross-sectarian leadership.
The regime and main opposition factions in Syria are setting preconditions for victory. Alternative, democratic preconditions need to be set for the Geneva talks to end an unwinnable war.
The Arab awakening promised democratic change and the end of violent jihadism. Today, the losers of 2010-11 are again on the rise.
The Euromaidan activists continue to protest throughout Ukraine, despite considerable pressure from the authorities. A young journalist was recently beaten within an inch of her life, cars are set alight and there have been many other acts of provocation. But the protesters are resolved not to yie
The spiral of violence in South Sudan is not simply an ethnic conflict of Dinka on Nuer. Politics, as well as oil, is at issue and a political settlement is required.
Russia today is a hybrid state, combining democratic institutions with authoritarian practices, which coexist in a continual state of tension. Richard Sakwa analyses its contradictions and suggests how the constitutional state can re-assert itself against the arbitrariness of the regime.
Both anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish racisms have become part of daily ‘common sense’ constructions everywhere in time of global crisis, expressing insecurity and hostility against ‘the Other’, ‘the terrorist’, ‘the usurper’. The Palestine/Israel question has helped to encourage these conflations and
A power-grab by rebels would come with huge civilian casualties and also set a bad precedent in a country with long ethnic rivalries, lacking a professional military and with an armed civilian population.
Iran’s adoption of an actively conciliatory foreign policy has set the stage for Iranian-Saudi cooperation and for further developments to take place.
The US launches drone strikes against groups or individuals whose behavior simply fits a “suspect” category: young men of military age carrying weapons, for instance (in areas where carrying a weapon may be the norm no matter who you are).
Recognition of the role of Cuba in aiding the ANC whilst the western powers backed apartheid is hardly serviceable in maintaining the conventional Cold War narrative. Hence the media's impressive avoidance of the context of the Castro-Obama handshake and its significance.
We are full well aware that we should not kid ourselves about the likely short- and long- term costs of severing all bilateral ties. What we are proposing of course is limited in scope and time.
