An Amnesty International report has highlighted the huge gap between the Syrian refugee crisis and the global response. Fortress Europe needs to discover an ethos of hospitality
Undiscussed in Seymour Hersh’s article are the motives of the other players in this conflict who also have sarin.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons should be a technical agency of the UN. But it has arguably become a piece in a geo-political chess game dominated by the US, invited into Syria to act in contravention of its remit.
With a fractious opposition internally and rival external powers engaged, the prospects are challenging for the ‘Geneva II’ conference on Syria. Threat of indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court could concentrate combatant minds.
How can the US and Russia look past their longstanding rivalry to move the political track forward and bring Syrian parties to the negotiating table?
If by any chance a rogue group gets hold of CW – even from an entirely different source – and uses them, we will be back to the prospect of missile strikes again. Knowing that to be the case, some rogue groups may well set out to provoke just that.
The Iron Wall of Jabotinsky has to be torn down, and it can only be torn down through long term civil and ideological struggles against this heritage of Zionism, with the Palestinians living inside the green line playing a crucial part.
Every time the Gulf States’ rulers justify their support for violent rebels in Syria or the military regime in Egypt by appealing to the unalienable right of peoples to basic rights and representative governance, they legitimize the Arab Spring in the eyes of their own peoples, too.
There is little systematic evidence to suggest that “ruthlessness” is, in and of itself, a critical variable.
Obama’s overture to Rouhani is costing the United States the goodwill of some old pro-Washington friends in the Arab world. When Prince Bandar, a close friend of the United States and a trusted adviser to the Saudi King, issues threats, Washington must listen.
Below the radar of the Geneva-2 peace talks, Bosnian and Syrian women are meeting to discuss the lessons that must be learnt from the failure of the Dayton Agreement. Without the voices of those who have the greatest stake in preserving peace in their countries, peace agreements don't work.
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as applied in Libya promoted regime change and western interests. Resistance to a proposed intervention in Syria shows emerging powers and public opinion will not accept an ends justify the means logic, and the US ‘exceptionalism’ that is said to justify it. A c
