Middle East and North Africa

Yom Kippur, October 6th 1973, at five minutes past two precisely, 4,000 artillery pieces, 250 aircraft and dozens of FROG missiles struck Israeli positions along the Suez Canal and the Sinai, at the same time along the Golan Heights 1,400 tanks advanced towards Israel.

Senior Fellow John Slinger published in The Spectator on Russia and the United States’ diplomatic agreement on the international control and subsequent destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons. Amidst the hopefulness and optimism, the answers to this question prove disturbing. We must remember that it might take a disaster even worse than 100,000 dead and the use of WMDs against civilians

Whilst it is widely agreed that the Arab Spring will have an enormous impact on al-Qaeda and the worldwide jihadist movement, there is no consensus on what this impact will look like. On one hand, there are optimists like Fawaz Gerges and Peter Bergen who think the Arab-Spring is a death blow to the jihadist movement.

The ongoing 'Arab Winter' is showing that there was always more than dictatorships to blame forthe Arab world's malaise. Popular protests across the Arab world in early 2011, which led to the overthrow of deeply entrenched authoritarian dictatorships, were warmly welcomed around the world.

The RAF interception of Syrian Jets over Cyprus is a sign that Britain can still be sucked into Syrian intervention through regional spill over and unforeseen events.

The true danger, for those whose anguish is measured not in column inches or Newsnightdebates, but in mortal danger, lies not in bypassing the moribund and morally-flawed UN Security Council, but in framing the justification for action so narrowly.

Perhaps we should stake out the case for interventionism in very simple terms: an internationalist party does not stand by and permit the slaughter of children in gas attacks.

There are no signs of any potential intervention by the international community, as long as Assad is not resorting to chemical and biological weapons — also known as the ‘red line’ policy of the Obama administration. But shouldn’t tens of thousands of men, women and children not be a ‘red line’ in themselves?

Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s last absolute monarchies with an extremely arbitrary, reactionary and obscurantist justice system based on the most fundamental codification of Sharia law.

Algeria has the potential to emerge from the Arab Spring as a regional power. This may be good news for western states, but it's bad new for Arab revolutionaries. In the context of the Arab Spring, or Arab Winter, much attention has been paid to those states seen to be exerting influence from behind the scenes