Home / Research / Regions / Middle East and North Africapage 8

Middle East and North Africa

The Three Faces of ISIS: Who is Behind the War in Iraq?

The fall of Mosul, allegedly to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is not the military victory it has been made out to be. For a start, as the New York Times and Agence France-Presse report, ISIS gunmen (who faced an army outnumbering them fifty-to-one) were able to occupy strategic positions around the city only after Iraqi commanders ordered their troops to stand down and retreat.

Read More »

Back to the Quagmire: Beyond Diplomacy in Syria

Whilst there is reason to be positive about the ongoing Geneva negotiations between the Assad government and the opposition, the general consensus is that there is little chance of these talks leading to any substantial progress. The reason for this underlying feeling is as clear as it is familiar, the rebels ultimately demand Assad goes, Assad refuses to do so.

Read More »

Senior Fellow Jacob Campbell: In Syria, the West is Too Late the Hero

Senior Fellow Jacob Campbell's article published in The Algemeiner on Western Foreign Policy in Syria. When the Syrian Support Group, the fundraising wing of the Free Syrian Army, was set up in Washington DC, I joined it to volunteer my services. I did so because I was frustrated at the reluctance of Western governments to arm Syria’s freedom fighters against the tyrant, Bashar al-Assad.

Read More »

Senior Fellow John Slinger: Syria Needs Our Help, Not Pity

Senior Fellow John Slinger's article published in the Huffington Post, shows Kofi Annan's exit, stage left, symbolises not the death of diplomacy, which never had more than a walk-on part in this tragedy, but instead the triumph of cynical, nihilistic realpolitik over all that is represented by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Read More »