Middle East
Diary
One strange consequence of my job as a foreign correspondent is discovering beautiful places when terrible things happen in them.…
Ali Baba and the 300 hostages
The kidnappers who prey on desperate migrants in Greece’s border badlands
Shifting sands in Saudi
Why America’s once-cautious ally suddenly looks so skittish
The will to fight
Isis have it. Who else?
Dr Johnson in Tahrir Square
Goodness knows what the Great Cham would have made of Radio 4 airing an adapted version of his philosophical fable,…
Sexed-up pacifism
Big-screen documentaries never change the world. Blackfish has not shortened the queues to see maltreated killer whales leap through hoops…
Away from the herd
As Kurdistan reaches for independence, its traditions are dying
Diary
Lunch with the man who hanged Saddam. My irrepressible old Baghdad friend Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Ealing neurologist turned Iraqi national security…
Jews against Miliband
Labour’s leader would be the first Jewish prime minister since Disraeli – so how has he alienated so many Jewish voters?
The real Iran deal
While Obama talks centrifuges in Geneva, Iranian-backed militia are redrawing the map of Iraq
It’s all kicking off again in the Islamic world
They have been burning churches and murdering Christians again in Niger. You’d think that they’d have more immediately pressing concerns…
Anatomy of a failure
Whatever happened to Barack Obama?
The ransom business
Islamic State commanders know exactly how to extract the greatest possible profit from their hostages. Some care about little else
The White Widow myth
Samantha Lewthwaite almost certainly isn’t as monstrous as the papers say. And she definitely isn’t as important
Hannibal vs the Islamic State
Whatever the Islamic State hopes ultimately to achieve by its current onslaught on all and sundry in the Middle East,…
The seeds of Wisdom
The Lawrence books are piling up, aren’t they? I don’t mean the author of The Rainbow, though as I write…
Whose side are they on?
Qatari money has flooded into London – but also into much less savoury places
More war for oil
You can’t understand any of the world’s crises without understanding petropolitics
Give them shelter
The tale is now familiar: shouts are heard from inside a freight container and police are called. A cargo of…
Diary
Wellington, Ontario A British visitor to this village might be disoriented by the flags. They look almost exactly like the…
Letters
Poor treatment Sir: Jane Kelly’s article (‘No tea or sympathy’, 2 August) on the lack of empathy and emotional support…
When did Israel start to seem so bafflingly foreign?
Glaring, the ennui over Israel. The way we drag our eyes to the page, and sigh, and want to read…
Mr al-Baghdadi’s inspirational vision for Europe
There is something attractive about almost the whole of southern Europe being part of an immense and somewhat rigorous caliphate,…
High life
When I hear the words Sykes-Picot I more often than not feel like punching an Englishman or a Frog —…
Why don’t any of my friends own holiday homes?
Hugo Rifkind 9 August 2014 9:00 am
This is to be one of those columns that makes the writer faintly wish there wasn’t an internet. It would…