Middle East

Why the Middle East needs more kings

26 September 2015 8:00 am

What the Middle East needs is more constitutional monarchies

A French illuminated manuscript shows supplies being loaded onto boats before departing for the Crusades

What it took to wage holy war, Medieval style

5 September 2015 9:00 am

For most of history, religion and war have been the most powerful social instincts of mankind and its chief collective…

Cameron’s talking to the wrong Libyan government. He should call my old driver

15 August 2015 9:00 am

Certainly not the government that Cameron hopes will help fix the migrant crisis. He’d be better off talking to my old driver

If you really want to help refugees, look beyond the Mediterranean

8 August 2015 9:00 am

It’s lazy and wrong just to focus on the migrants who make it here

Even Nazis weren’t quite sure how to do the Hitler salute

25 July 2015 9:00 am

Gesture politics A royal home movie from 1933 apparently showed the future Queen, aged seven, and her mother giving a…

Vespasian’s Middle East policy (it should be ours, too)

25 July 2015 9:00 am

As Ahmed Rashid argued last week, it is hard to see what the West is doing in the Middle East,…

Some good came out of the negotiating chamber this week, but it concerned Iran rather than Greece

18 July 2015 9:00 am

As an occasional lecturer on the abstruse topic of the efficacy of sanctions in conflict resolution, I find myself much…

Christina Lamb’s diary: Meeting the mother of the Sousse killer

11 July 2015 9:00 am

One strange consequence of my job as a foreign correspondent is discovering beautiful places when terrible things happen in them.…

Migrants warm up beside a campfire on the Macedonian-Greek border (Photo Robert Atanasovski/Getty)

Ali Baba and the 300 hostages: the kidnappers who prey on desperate migrants in Europe’s border badlands

11 July 2015 9:00 am

The kidnappers who prey on desperate migrants in Greece’s border badlands

Why Saudi Arabia is kicking back against the USA

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Why America’s once-cautious ally suddenly looks so skittish

When Dr Johnson went to Tahrir Square

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Goodness knows what the Great Cham would have made of Radio 4 airing an adapted version of his philosophical fable,…

We Are Many reviewed: does anyone think this anti-Iraq War film will change anything?

23 May 2015 9:00 am

Big-screen documentaries never change the world. Blackfish has not shortened the queues to see maltreated killer whales leap through hoops…

As Kurdistan strives for a new life, its old traditions are dying

16 May 2015 9:00 am

As Kurdistan reaches for independence, its traditions are dying

Justin Marozzi’s diary: Lunch with Saddam’s hangman, and a democratic revolution in Kensington

25 April 2015 9:00 am

Lunch with the man who hanged Saddam. My irrepressible old Baghdad friend Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Ealing neurologist turned Iraqi national security…

How Ed Miliband lost the Jewish vote

18 April 2015 9:00 am

Labour’s leader would be the first Jewish prime minister since Disraeli – so how has he alienated so many Jewish voters?

Forget Geneva: the real US-Iran carve-up is happening in Iraq

21 March 2015 9:00 am

While Obama talks centrifuges in Geneva, Iranian-backed militia are redrawing the map of Iraq

It’s all kicking off in the Islamic world. Nothing at all to do with Islam, of course

24 January 2015 9:00 am

They have been burning churches and murdering Christians again in Niger. You’d think that they’d have more immediately pressing concerns…

Barack Obama: anatomy of a failure

3 January 2015 9:00 am

Whatever happened to Barack Obama?

How Islamic State commanders squeeze their hostages for every penny

15 November 2014 9:00 am

Islamic State commanders know exactly how to extract the greatest possible profit from their hostages. Some care about little else

The myth of the White Widow

1 November 2014 9:00 am

Samantha Lewthwaite almost certainly isn’t as monstrous as the papers say. And she definitely isn’t as important

Hannibal (and Alexander the Great) vs the Islamic State

18 October 2014 9:00 am

Whatever the Islamic State hopes ultimately to achieve by its current onslaught on all and sundry in the Middle East,…

The young T.E. Lawrence in Arab dress

Secretive, arrogant and reckless: the young T.E. Lawrence began life as he meant to go on

11 October 2014 9:00 am

The Lawrence books are piling up, aren’t they? I don’t mean the author of The Rainbow, though as I write…

What will it take for us to stop doing business with Qatar?

4 October 2014 9:00 am

Qatari money has flooded into London – but also into much less savoury places

The wars that really are about the oil

30 August 2014 9:00 am

You can’t understand any of the world’s crises without understanding petropolitics