No image available
/ 19 May 2008

Middle East: It’s business as usual

Now that Barack Obama is almost certain to be the Democratic Party’s nominee, those who want to believe he may change the United States’s foreign policy should turn to his pre-campaign biography. I don’t mean the recent <i>Audacity of Hope</i>, but <i>Dreams From My Father</i>, which he wrote in his early 30s.

No image available
/ 6 March 2008

Continuity is the name of the game

Short of his falling out of an SUV speeding the wrong way down Moscow’s traffic-congested roads, there was never any doubt that Dmitry Medvedev would be elected Russia’s next president. The out-going president, Vladimir Putin, picked Medvedev as his successor and no challenger had a chance of beating the Kremlin’s choice.

No image available
/ 29 October 2007

A fight on many fronts

Turkey’s move towards a full-scale invasion of northern Iraq looks more like a crab’s walk than a charging bull. The ruling party of moderate Islamists has many foes to target, and not just the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the ostensible enemy, argues Jonathan Steele.

No image available
/ 11 December 2006

A coordinated struggle for power

Diyala is Iraq’s province of death. No one knows how many people die violently here every week. Batches of bodies are dumped by the roadside almost every night. Many go missing, their corpses never found. Unlike Baghdad, where news of murder is widely reported, Diyala is part of Iraq’s invisible war.

No image available
/ 1 February 2003

Counting the cost of war

With as much secrecy as the Pentagon, the United Nations has been busily counting the likely casualty toll of a war on Iraq. While the Pentagon focuses on its troops, the network of UN specialist agencies is trying to estimate what would happen to Iraqis.