On 14 July 2024, as football fans gathered to watch the Euro 2024 final, a fireball ripped through a café in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, later claimed responsibility for the blast and the five lives it extinguished. It …
Why couldn’t the UK deal with the Isis matchmaker?
When Tooba Gondal, Britain’s notorious “Isis matchmaker”, callously celebrated the November 2015 Paris attacks, she couldn’t have possibly known that her destiny was to return to that great city as a resident of its penal system. Last December, Gondal was …
The Marxist who recognised evil
Norman Geras, who died 10 years ago today, was an unusual figure on the Western Left: he was a Marxist who steadfastly and unequivocally opposed militant Islamism and jihadi terrorism. As a free-thinking political theorist, he was as strident in …
Pakistani democracy is dead
Life has come full circle for Imran Khan. In 2018, he was elected to be prime minister of Pakistan after his predecessor, Nawaz Sharif, was disqualified over corruption charges resulting from the Panama Papers. Khan stated at the time that …
Should Pakistan surrender?
Pakistan is in a mess. Controlled by an increasingly unpopular military, the nation is teetering on the brink of default. By July, the country’s foreign exchange reserves are set to fall below $3 billion, barely sufficient to cover a month’s …