The death last night of Nelson Mandela serves as a reminder of the enormous potential of African leaders to bring positive and lasting change to the continent. It is a reminder also of the obligations…
- Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham
Signed by the P5 + Germany and mediated by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton, the deal achieved with Iran on the latter’s nuclear programme has important implications for regional…
At a meeting at the Wall Street Journal this week, Martin E Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that the United States’ ability to exercise influence in the Middle East had significantly…
Things have not been going well in Iraq for a while. Sectarian violence is on the increase, having reached levels last seen in 2008. As a consequence, the government of Nouri al-Maliki is in dire straits…
Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif will meet with US president Barack Obama tomorrow, and American drone attacks are likely to be high on the agenda, alongside the impact of developments in Afghanistan…
Transitional justice, a common feature of most regime changes whether they are the result of a civil war or a revolution, has been practised in different ways in the course of the Arab Spring. In Tunisia…
Twenty years ago, on 3 and 4 October 1993, the so-called Battle of Mogadishu, also referred to as Black Hawk Down, raged in the Somali capital. Two decades on, this region of East Africa still suffers…
The terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, has come to an end now with five more terrorists killed and eleven in custody. The attack raises a number of questions over security…
Much of the current debate about drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs) is about whether their deployment to countries such as Pakistan and Yemen is legal or ethical. This debate is predominantly focused…
Two weeks ago airstrikes against the Syrian regime in retaliation to its assumed use of chemical weapons seemed a foregone conclusion, despite Russian and Chinese resistance. US-led Western resolve, albeit…
Yesterday’s debate and vote in the British House of Commons on Syria has demonstrated how little common ground there is between supporters and opponents of military action against the Assad regime in response…
Last week violence in Syria intensified again with new allegations of the large-scale use of chemical weapons. Western leaders, still seeking confirmation of President Assad’s culpability, debated an appropriate…
Egypt is waking up to a death toll of more than 460 people after yesterday’s massacres. After factoring in the death toll of weeks of unrest, that’s close on 800 dead and many thousands more injured since…
Yemen is once again at the centre of a major terrorist threat. The Yemeni government has announced the uncovering of a major Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) plot aimed at the country’s critical…
The second anniversary of South Sudan’s independence is overshadowed by the release of the annual State Failure Index by the Fund for Peace, which ranks the country as the world’s fourth most failed state…
The military coup in Egypt that ended the reign of the country’s first democratically elected president was, in part, triggered by increasingly large protests of Egyptians who were deeply dissatisfied…
The announcement by the United States that it intends to enter into direct negotiations with the Afghan Taliban represents a significant opportunity to manage the Western “exit” from the country by the…
President Obama’s confirmation that the United States would begin arming Syrian rebels has prompted an urgent debate about both the legality and the effectiveness of the decision. The announcement, ahead…
The promise by Syrian rebel leader Selim Idriss this week that “we are allowed to fight Hezbollah fighters inside [Lebanese] territory” was a chilling intimation of what may lie ahead for the region. What…
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