![Kurdish politician Hervin Khalaf, who was apparently pulled from her car and executed last week by Turkish-backed paramilitaries [Photo: Getty]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2019/10/Paul_Wood.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
Pax Russica: as Trump abandons Syria’s Kurds, Russia is ready to expand its empire
While American troops were hurriedly leaving north-eastern Syria, a young female Kurdish politician called Hervin Khalaf was pulled from her…
Donald Trump’s blunderful presidency
There’s a story about Donald Trump during the 2016 election campaign that, apocryphal or not, explains why he’s now facing…
Katharine Gun: the spy who tried to stop the Iraq war
In his memoir of office, Decision Points, George W. Bush writes about going to see Tony Blair in the Azores…
Lebanon: the world’s best failed state
Look down from the mountains outside Beirut and, on most days, you’ll see a grey blanket of smog choking the…
Mueller testifies – Trump wins
Robert Mueller’s appearance before two Congressional committees today was something close to a disaster for the Democrats. The former special…
The brutality of the Isis Beatles
Beirut Television cameras get everywhere these days. Or maybe that was always true. Gore Vidal, the grand old man of…
What one activist’s death tells us about war crimes in Syria
In the 1990s film The Usual Suspects, the detective character explains how to spot a murderer. You arrest three men…
The Mueller report: if not collusion, then obstruction?
When Robert Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel, ‘[t]he President slumped back in his chair and said, “Oh my God.…
Barr investigates the investigators
‘OBAMA TAPPED MY PHONES!’ When President Trump blared out this accusation in a series of tweets in March 2017, the White…
We should take a hard look at our reporting of Trump and Russia
Washington REVERSE FERRET! When he edited the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie used to throw open his office door and bellow this…
‘The Islamic State will never die’: their territory is gone but the jihadis are always with us
Beirut As I write, Isis is still holding out on a few hundred square yards of dirt in the village…
In Idlib, the final chapter in Syria’s civil war has begun
Beirut The customs man wore a white linen suit. He had a large moustache. His ample belly touched the edge…
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