Syria
Isis’s weakness is now its strength
As coronavirus swept the globe a year ago, Isis began issuing pronouncements. ‘God, by his will, sent a punishment to…
TikTok's fake news problem
Something troubling is happening on TikTok. The video sharing app is sometimes dismissed as a place where young people go…
We shouldn’t forget the horrific crimes of Isis returnees
Summer 2015. A five-year-old girl is chained up and left outside in the desert sun in Fallujah, Iraq – a…
The twisted logic of Shamima Begum's defenders
Shamima Begum is back in the news. Firstly because she’s had a makeover. She can be seen on the front…
Shamima Begum is not a victim
Adark cloud hangs over the Al Hol Camp where Shamima Begum is being held in North-Eastern Syria. She is said…
Macer Gifford: My fight against Isis
A warning from the British trader who fought in Syria
Oil on troubled waters: the US-Saudi alliance is crumbling
The US-Saudi alliance is crumbling
The art of the hermit
Holed up in her sixth-floor London flat, Laura Freeman finds solace in the art of the hermit
The story behind Donald Trump’s fake withdrawal from Syria
That noise you can hear is Donald Trump flip–flopping in the sand. Last week, American troops and dozens of tanks…
Stop all the clocks, Baghdadi is dead
Bright eyes, burning like fire Bright eyes, how can you close and fail? How can the light that burned so…
Does Trump have a better idea than endless wars?
This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. ‘WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND…
Portrait of the week: Brexit uncertainty, Turkey in Syria and a Chinese threat
Home Brexit teetered from uncertainty to uncertainty. Parliament had been summoned to sit on Saturday 19 October to debate what…
![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 shameful Syrian betrayal
Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria is one of the most shortsighted foreign policy miscalculations in recent memory.…
The European fighters who battled Isis – and were abandoned by their governments
Foreign fighters are returning from the battlefield — not Islamists but the Americans, Europeans and South Americans who fought to…
What would you do if you were a Syrian migrant?
‘Put yourself in their shoes,’ says Zahra Mackaoui, a British-Lebanese journalist who has been following the stories of refugees from…
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…
Vice vs vice: Cheney barbecues Pence in Georgia
It was no cakewalk for Vice President Mike Pence. He had showed up in Sea Island, Ga., reckoning that he…
I always come away more confused after listening to Moral Maze
Is it me or are we now faced (or perhaps I should say fazed?) much more often by stories in…
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
How did mild-mannered eye doctor Bashar al-Assad end up a mass murderer?
‘How did this mild-mannered eye doctor end up killing hundreds of thousands of people?’ someone wondered about Bashar al-Assad in…
As Assad recovers, Syria is returning to stability
In order to avoid the Labour conference and yet more predictable media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, I escaped late last…
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…
Assad is back for good in Syria – and with Trump’s blessing
Amid the confusion and the almost deafening cries of treachery and collusion over Donald Trump’s relations with Russia, few noticed…
Putin says he’s making Russia great again. In reality, it’s crumbling
This is Putin’s time. Next week, the Fifa World Cup kicks off in Moscow, and the Kremlin has spared no…
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