Whenever Afghanistan comes up in conversation, there are nearly always at least one of two myths put forward: firstly, that the only thing being achieved in this war is an increasing death toll of our troops; secondly, that the Afghans do not want us there and they were better off before we invaded.

I respect Roger Waters’ right to encourage others to boycott Israeli goods, though I disagree with it. But what is plainly foolish, not to mention an insult to that noble struggle against racism, is to talk as former the Pink Floyd bassist does about “apartheid”.

John Slinger writes in the New Statesman, that much more can be done short of an Iraq-style invasion in Syria. All too often, international events bear out the adage that "history teaches us that history teaches us nothing". Lessons from the shameful response of the international community to other crises must inform our policy on Syria

We were wrong about Saddam Hussein. By ‘we’ I don’t mean the international intelligence community and I don’t mean the governments of the Coalition of the Willing. I mean the public and the media who, to this day, believe and say that what was found in Iraq after the fall of Saddam’s Baathist regime showed Saddam was not a threat to the international society.

Surprise is surely the last thing we should feel at Foreign Secretary William Hague, reporting on Monday that there was increasing evidence that President Assad was using chemical weapons on his own people.

The crisis in Syria is on-going and so is the debate about the West’s options to help end the bloodshed. Those in favour of a more pro-active policy are regularly confronted with a variety of arguments against intervention.

Human rights are universal, but they are yet to be universalised. Transparent sovereignty is the answer. Whilst being a legalistic term that tends to evoke groans, apprehensive of impending, inevitable boredom, the word ‘sovereignty’ is central to any debate on whether humanitarian intervention in the internal affairs of a State is appropriate or justifiable.

Executive Director Julie Lenarz published in the Times of Israel on the ongoing misconceptions the West has regarding the civil war in Syria. Two and a half years after the war kicked off in Syria the debate rages on over whether the West should get involved or stay out of the brutal conflict.

By Jacob Sharpe – Senior Fellow 18th June 2013 Iran is a country that adheres very closely to the democratic principle of ‘one man, one vote’. Perhaps a little too closely, in fact, inasmuch as that one man is Supreme ...

Two experiences stand out from my recent visit to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq: meeting refugees fleeing Syria at the Domiz refugee camp; and seeing a weeping son uncovering the body of his father, Mohammed Serspi, murdered by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s.