Tag Archives: Libya

Bombing ISIS won’t stop it

Posted on July 3, 2015 | 2 comments

Britain has had a national minute of silence today to remember the victims – including 30 Britons killed – of the beachside massacre in Sousse, Tunisia, last week. Then it will be back to politics as usual, which means discussing when to bomb in Syria. God help us. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace, Middle East & North Africa

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Extremism, prevention, global inequality, ISIS and migration

Posted on February 20, 2015 | 1 comment

Events in the Middle East continue to horrify and escalate in equal measure. Last week Jordan vowed all manner of action against ISIS in Syria for burning a pilot alive, this week Egypt bombed ISIS in Libya for beheading 21 Coptic Christians. At the same time, President Obama convened an international meeting on extremism with the emphasis on prevention and the idea took hold that ISIS would infiltrate people-trafficking boats in the Mediterranean. Arise TV in London were good enough to invite me to hold forth for a few minutes on both Obama and ISIS. We covered a fair amount of ground in 6 minutes:

 

Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace, Middle East & North Africa

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The Middle East – who cares?

Posted on July 11, 2014 | 7 comments

Or at least, who cares enough to try to start thinking anew? The region is burning. Apart from the parties to the conflicts who want to win, nobody seems to have any idea of what to do. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace, The Middle East

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Libya: the (next) moment of decision is approaching

Posted on July 6, 2011 | 1 comment

When intervention in Libya was being discussed in Britain a few months back, the key ethical argument was the dual claim of the urgency of doing something and impossibility of standing by and doing nothing. After the first 2-3 weeks, it became clear even to passionate advocates of intervention that the issue was more complicated than that. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace

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What’s conflict?

Posted on June 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

Students in the Master of Fine Arts course at Slade, University College London, have put together a collection of their work. They chose the theme of conflict and all the pieces reflect on it in one way or another. The collection ranges from internal conflict to open war, from the personal to the political and back again. They asked me to write a foreword and as a result I had (the opportunity) to think about some things from the bottom up. Here is what I wrote: Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace

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Libya and the fog of intervention

Posted on April 10, 2011 | 6 comments

The three weeks of what has become NATO’s armed intervention in Libya have generated far more questions than anyone could hope to answer. The uncertainties by no means overwhelm the case for intervention but they do add immediacy to the reservations expressed by the doubters and sceptics. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace

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Intervention in Libya? A case of shooting slowly from the hip

Posted on March 10, 2011 | 7 comments

Only ten days ago, when UK Prime Minister David Cameron put up the flag for a no-fly zone over Libya, nobody saluted. Now the British and French are drafting a UN Security Council Resolution. After all, you cannot just sit and watch the dictator wield overhwelming force so he and his disgusting son can hang onto power and not think something should be done to stop him.

True enough – but you should think very, very carefully about what can and should be done. Continue reading →

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Posted in Conflict & peace, Power

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