Bronwen Maddox

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Deputy Chairman of the Hamas political bureau Saleh Al-Arouri makes a speech in Cairo, Egypt on 12 October 2017. (Photo by Ahmed Gamil/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

MundoOriente Próximo

There are some interviews you don’t forget. For me, high on that list was a conversation with Saleh al-Arouri, one of the leaders of Hamas implicated in the 7 October atrocities in Israel, who has just been killed in Lebanon by a drone strike.

Israel has not responded to questions about whether it committed the drone strike – nor to Hamas’s furious accusation that it had made ‘a cowardly attack’.

But al-Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and a deputy to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, was known to be one of the names on the target list cited by Israeli officials in the wake of 7 October as they try to destroy the terrorist group.…  Seguir leyendo »

Britain's former prime minister, David Cameron, leaves 10 Downing Street after being appointed foreign secretary in a Cabinet reshuffle on 13 November 2023 in London, England. Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images.

Europa

There are many reshuffles that provoke surprise; there are some that prompt bemusement as well. Rishi Sunak’s decision to install David Cameron as the seventh foreign secretary in seven years is one that does both. The former prime minister will bring undoubted strengths into the top team and to the UK’s relationships abroad. The concern must be, however, that these could be outweighed by the controversial legacy he brings too. And none of that says that he can bring back voters for his party at home.

He brings one clear advantage as Sunak’s new foreign secretary. As prime minister, he was comfortable on the world stage and congenial in the relationships he formed.…  Seguir leyendo »

Smoke and flame rise after Israeli air forces targeting a shopping center in Gaza Strip, Gaza on October 07, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

MundoOriente Próximo

It is impossible to overstate the sense of national shock in Israel. The barrage of missiles is one thing, but the sight of Hamas militants moving through Israeli villages shooting will be deeply disturbing to all Israeli citizens.

On Sunday morning Israel estimated more than 300 had been killed in the attacks, with around 100 taken hostage. A country that famously describes itself as in a ‘tough neighbourhood’ and has poured its soul and its GDP into national defence, intelligence and the very cause of survival failed to foresee the assault or to respond quickly.

The US and other key Israel allies including the UK made immediate sweeping statements condemning Hamas.…  Seguir leyendo »

The UK's new king, Charles III, at Buckingham Palace in London the day after his mother Queen Elizabeth II died. Photo by DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images.

Europa,

To see the five-metre flags hanging over London’s Regent Street and Piccadilly in preparation for the coronation is to look at one of the most solid parts of the UK’s constitution. It is a reminder that the existence of the monarchy spares the UK from confronting constitutional questions which it is not well-equipped to answer.

It is already evident that King Charles III intends a careful evolution of the monarchy in his own mould. His own interests are clear; his long commitment to environmental and sustainability issues is evident in the causes he champions and it would be surprising if he did not attend one of the next COP climate change summits, as he had clearly wanted to in November 2022.…  Seguir leyendo »

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's first minister and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), leaves Bute House in Edinburgh on the day she announces her resignation. Photo by ANDY BUCHANAN/AFP via Getty Images.

Europa

Nicola Sturgeon has left at the right time, maybe even a bit late. Although one of the most influential politicians the UK has seen in recent times, she was also one of the most divisive.

Her ability to fan Scotland’s sense of difference from England brought new hope to the independence movement, but this cause – by which she measured herself above all others – has been losing ground and for now, looks to be in abeyance.

Neat and disciplined, Sturgeon could not have presented a greater contrast to Boris Johnson in the first months of the pandemic. That was one of her finest moments.…  Seguir leyendo »

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak outside 10 Downing Street in London, October 2022. Henry Nicholls / Reuters

Europa

Yesterday, when Rishi Sunak stood in front of the portable lectern outside No. 10 Downing Street to make his first statement as prime minister, it marked a watershed in many ways. At 42, he is the youngest prime minister in modern British history; he is also the first person of color to hold the post, and the first Hindu. But the significance goes beyond these symbolic attributes: he represents a possible return to stable government after 44 days of unrelenting crisis under his predecessor, Liz Truss, and after six years of political drama.

Truss is an unusual political character: she lacks charisma or force of persuasion and yet still identifies as a disruptor.…  Seguir leyendo »

Liz Truss announces her resignation as UK prime minister after just six weeks in office. Photo by DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images.

Europa

Liz Truss could not command support for her calamitous – and misnamed – mini-budget. And once her new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt had overturned its provisions, she had no mission or credibility left.

The budget pushed interest rates higher and they did not fall much on the scrapping of it, leaving her open to the charge she pushed up mortgage and interest costs for every person and business in the country. Her apology for ‘mistakes made’ was not going to reverse that, so her MPs were right to tell her to go.

Her departure does mark a victory for at least some of the UK’s institutions, even if it might not seem that way to observers around the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

Liz Truss delivers her first major speech as the UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs at Chatham House in December 2021.

Europa

For all the smoke-and-mirrors talk now commonplace about Brexit opportunities, there is real potential that Liz Truss – as the clear frontrunner to be the next UK prime minister – could extract from the aftermath of that upheaval as well as from the turmoil in the world.

But the approach and priorities she revealed during her one year as a better UK foreign secretary than Boris Johnson was – although he did set a low bar – as well as the past three months campaigning for the leadership of her party contain a warning.

She has shown a willingness to aggravate relationships with allies in pursuit of the support of her party faithful, and of a vision of British independence as well as a tendency to dismiss economic analysis when it inconveniently questions her assertions about favoured policies.…  Seguir leyendo »

Supporters and opponents of Britain's exit from the European Union, outside Westminster Palace in London on Nov. 15. (Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images)

EuropaUnión Europea,

The lights from Committee Room 14 in the House of Commons were shining brightly onto the Thames on Wednesday night, as more than 300 Conservative members of Parliament packed themselves inside to vote on whether to keep Theresa May as prime minister. After three hours, the news came through: A majority had backed May and she had survived.

Yet it resolves nothing in the great Brexit drama that has brought political life to a standstill and cast uncertainty over the daily decisions of the country, its people and its businesses. May must still get support from Parliament for a deal with the European Union — one that very few members of Parliament of any party seem to like.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

The trial of Lubna Hussein, the Sudanese journalist sentenced to 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public, was postponed yesterday, a tribute to her gamble in choosing worldwide publicity rather than accepting the sentence, as most do. The Khartoum police promptly found others to beat — the women who had come to protest.

This story resonates all the more in the month of the Afghan presidential elections. It’s worth making the case for why we should spend money and effort and yes, sometimes, military lives, in defence of women’s rights, in places that barely recognise the concept.

At a tense time in the Afghan mission, it’s an unfashionable point to make.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaMundoOriente PróximoInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, , ,

Yesterday a Pakistani security official said that if India now put more forces on to the disputed Kashmir border, the Pakistani Army would do likewise. By the way, that would mean that Pakistan put less effort into fighting the Taleban on its western border, he added, in an unsubtle warning to the US and Britain. Pakistan understands only too well that for the West its border with Afghanistan represents the frontline in the war on terror.

On the Pakistani side priorities are different. As the calls go up for a clampdown on terrorists, Islamabad's most urgent desire is not for a Nato-defined victory, but for a peaceful life on its Afghan border.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

Every time there is a chance for the United States to escape from the trap it has created for itself in Guantanamo Bay, it slams the door shut.

The Pentagon's decision this week to seek the death penalty for six men it accuses of the 9/11 attacks, and to try them under the hugely disputed version of military courts that it has devised, is one of the stupidest mistakes that the Bush Administration has made.

Everything about Guantanamo is an affront to the values the US says it is defending in the War on Terror. The principle of holding hundreds of people there without charge, for years; the fluid rules of the “military commissions” used for the very few who will be tried; the torture that the Administration acknowledges has been practised on these six: all these are an assault on the US Constitution.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

Oil at nearly $100 a barrel cannot keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad safe in the presidency of Iran for ever. Finally, it seems as if his breathtaking economic mismanagement, squandering an unprecedented bonanza, may prise him from office.

His critics have been predicting from his election in June 2005 that his wilful ignorance of economics would lead to his downfall. They have been wrong so far because of oil prices even higher than expected; a still-deep hunger among the very poor for Ahmadinejad's message; and his fortuitously successful handling of the nuclear dispute with the West.

The parliamentary elections in March will be the best test of his support — and of whether clerics and other leading figures now want to turf him out.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

This has been a shatteringly bleak week for Pakistan, but not one that condemns it to being a failed state. The return of Benazir Bhutto, overshadowed by the bomb that killed 140, is a step forward. But although she has been championed in Europe and the US, she is a long way from being the solution to her country’s savage problems.

Pakistan dominates Britain’s foreign worries, officials say, and they are right. It is not just that terrorism is on the increase – as well as the capacity of extremists, in this age of eight-hour direct flights and the internet, to cause mischief in the Pakistani community in Britain.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

The most extraordinary spectacle of the past week has been the apparent desire of the US Congress to pronounce as genocide the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Turks, even though there is nothing more provocative to Turkey, and no worse time at which to do it.

Why take up an historic cause with such passion? And why now, when the most precarious planks of US foreign policy rest on already fraying relations with Turkey? It is not just the Bush Administration that has asked Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, to desist. Eight former secretaries of state, of all political hues, have signed a petition calling for the same.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalOrden Mundial

Is anguish about the US’s sour relations with the world a problem of the past?

Sadly not, argue a quartet of French and American think-tankers in a persuasive pamphlet which is more precise and practical than the genre normally delivers.

Iraq isn’t the lasting problem, they maintain, even if it was the cause of so much tension. Nor was the Bush Administration’s high-handed pursuit of national interest entirely to blame, they say (and Gary Samore, one of the authors, adds that not only has the Bush team softened its rhetoric, but that the next president is certain to be milder in tone).…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

There is a sense that the heat from Pakistan’s immediate crisis is evaporating. But not because the country is on course for democracy - more because President Musharraf has half-stitched together a formula for his own survival, and with it, for a kind of short-term stability.

Nawaz Sharif, the former Prime Minister, who is now under an ambiguous form of detention in Saudi Arabia after his attempt to return last month lasted only a humiliating five hours, symbolises the democratic failings of the plan. His future may even depend on Benazir Bhutto, his one-time ally and now bitter rival - in which case it is a fair bet she will keep him out in the cold.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

The Senate came into its own yesterday and put to General David Petraeus the central weakness of his case. Senator Joe Biden, a Democrat sceptical of the war and of the US’s attempts to hold Iraq together, challenged Petraeus, the US commander, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to explain why present military success meant lasting political improvement.

Even if the military tactics have worked, he argued, while Iraq lacks a government that will embrace all factions, then when US forces go home, Iraq will fall apart.

It is hard to argue against that, and Petraeus and Crocker did not do so. In analysis of Iraq, they are towards the upbeat end, but not to the point of implausibility.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaMundoOriente PróximoEuropaUnión Europea, ,

If Britain had not just clashed with the US over its plans to leave Iraq, it might have been easier to avoid the rising tension over Afghanistan. But not very easy: there are half a dozen disagreements over tactics, and a longer-term distinct difference of interest.

Tension was on the cards since Tony Blair decided that Britain should take a leading role in Afghanistan, giving it a responsibility for the overall outcome that it would never have had in Iraq. From the beginning its aims and style of operation have been different from those of the US.

Washington wanted the capture of Osama bin Laden, the expulsion of the Taleban, the installation of a pro-Western government, and enough stabilisation to stop Afghanistan remaining a fountain of terrorism.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo

There is no foreign country that matters more to Iran than Iraq (except perhaps the US). The puzzle is why the US imagines that Iranian involvement in Iraq will melt away if it protests angrily.

Yesterday’s skirmish, in which the US arrested eight Iranians in Baghdad and then let them go after consulting the Iraqi Government, was trivial and irrelevant to the broader clash between the two countries. However, it is another small sign that Iraq’s Shia-led Government is prepared to side with Tehran against the US, if only to avoid antagonism.

There is no reason – although Tehran may not need one – to connect the incident with President Bush’s speech the previous night, in which he declared that Iran’s nuclear ambitions put the region “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”.…  Seguir leyendo »