Bashar al-Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron fist for 24 years before getting his comeuppance, received silent support from one of the unlikeliest places during his dictatorial rule. Numerous groups in Turkey’s splintered Left, from self-professed Maoists to Stalin …
Colombia is doomed by corruption
I owe my functioning right hand to the business acumen of Pablo Escobar.
That claim might — indirectly — almost be true. Seven years ago, during a paddle in a jungle pool in the province of Guaviare in Colombia, I …
The sanctions-busters funding Iran
Donald Trump isn’t yet back in the White House — but his Iranian policy is clear. Like he did in his first term, he’ll pursue a vigorous policy against Tehran, hampering its nuclear programme and backing its rivals across the …
How Syria will shape Europe’s future
War is of its nature an uncertain business. Only in retrospect does Assad’s fall, so improbable last week, now look fated. It is ironic, given the opprobrium with which Arab normalisation with his regime was greeted by pro-rebel advocates, that …
Syria has spooked MBS
The flight of Bashar al-Assad and his family to Russia, where they have been granted asylum, indicates that however ruthless his style of governing by murder, torture and repression, he is not an ideologist. Instead of remaining defiantly in Syria …
Will Syria re-open Lebanon’s wounds?
For most of Lebanon’s modern history, the Assads have been as immovable as its mountains. As far back as 1976, early in the Lebanese Civil War, Hafez al-Assad ordered Syrian troops over the border. And there they remained, for 29 …
Will Erdoğan crush the Syrian Kurds?
Syria’s two million Kurds have every reason to loathe Bashar al-Assad. His Baathist regime long repressed their identity, and there are many Kurdish activists among the countless people emerging, dazed and stumbling, from the dictatorship’s dungeons. But even as Kurds …
Will Tehran be next?
Damascus has fallen — something that has as much to do with Iran as with Syria. Tehran had long kept the Assad dictatorship in power, with its Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, the largest non-state army on Earth. But starting in …
Emmanuel Macron is no de Gaulle
With France facing its worst political crisis since 1968, most of its citizens know exactly whom to blame: President Emmanuel Macron, whose tumbling approval levels hit just 23% even before the no-confidence vote that toppled his latest government. Across the …
What next for Syria?
It was the clock tower that settled it. The images of rebels driving around the central square of Homs, its famous clocktower visible, confirmed they had taken the city. This meant they could now sever Damascus from the coastal regions, …
Javier Milei: Argentina’s Darwinian disruptor
It is easy to mock Argentina’s president Javier Milei with his crazy hair, cloned dogs and claims of expertise at tantric sex. He was, after all, nicknamed El Loco (The Madman) as a teenage goalkeeper and seems often determined to …
What the Right gets wrong about Canada
Life in Canada has become a nightmare — if you believe the British Right. The recent debate in Britain’s Parliament on the legalisation of assisted dying prompted MPs and journalists to warn that “state suicide” in Canada has led to …
Why Syria is back at war
The Syrian jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) surprised the world and probably itself with its almost unimpeded conquest of Aleppo at the weekend, conquering in hours territory that had been bloodily fought over for many years. And like an …
Hamas is not invincible
It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that Hamas will survive no matter how hard it is pummelled by Israel. Leaders will fall; new leaders will rise. Hamas’s ties to the Palestinian people will sustain it regardless of the horrors …
Hezbollah has weakened Iran
It’s finally over. After 14 months of fighting, including the worst the country has seen in decades, the guns of Lebanon have fallen still. Nothing, of course, is certain: the Israel-Hezbollah agreement may yet flounder, and both sides have already …