Shia mosque burnt in Brussels

You may have heard about the Imam al-Ridha mosque in Brussels which was burnt last month by a Salafi terrorist. The arson attack led to the tragic death of the imam, Sheikh Abdullah Dadou, a father-of-four from Morocco. A delegation from London travelled to Brussels to pay their respects to his family and the community. [...]

Living in a topsy-turvy world

It really is a sign of just how skewed our priorities are when a couple of Twitter postings about the Prophet (PBUH) cause more of a stir than the killing of innocent people. Or, as a friend of mine Tweeted “killing an innocent in the name of my religion is 1000 times more offensive than [...]

It’s the institutions, stupid.

One of the most enduring images of the Arab uprisings so far has been that of Muammar al-Qadhafi being assaulted, and eventually murdered, after his capture. The fact that this was done at the hands of people who were portrayed as being pro-democracy activists captured a lot of the debate surrounding the ”Arab Spring”—were the [...]

NGO blues

So we hear that prominent NGO-funders have fallen foul of the Egyptian authorities recently. Staff of the usual suspects in the forms of NDI, IRI have taken refuge at the US embassy in Cairo prior to an eventual exit. Needless to say a confusing political landscape there hasn’t helped,  but it has provoked a thought about [...]

Why the Haditha verdict hurts so much

Even by Iraq’s post-war bloody standards, the Haditha massacre shocked a nation and the world. The cold-blooded killing of 24 civilians by a US army unit epitomised the callous disregard for life that many Iraqis experienced during the years of occupation. This has obviously not registered with either the US justice system nor some cretinous commentators. So for [...]

Arab Spring – the Rise and Fall of our Principles

Author: Omar Kadir. Follow him on twitter @oksos1 Friday, February 16th 2011, president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled the nation of Tunisia since 1987, had fled in a plane with his relatives. This day was a day that instilled confidence and hope to all the Arabs in the Middle East. It gave the [...]

You don’t want to lose that AAA rating.

So the Iranians have refused to hand Ismail al-Lami (AKA abu Dera3) over to Iraqi authorities. This chap is probably obsolete in his use to Iran, but for them to shop him would deal a blow to their credibility in the international terrorism market. The Quds force seems to have established links with many of [...]

Book Review: It’s our turn to eat – What Kenya can teach Iraq

As Iraq completes its transition from totalitarian nightmare to crony capitalist rentier state it may be worth looking into how other countries have perfected corruption in the past and save us all a lot of trouble.  To this noble end I began reading a book based on a whistle-blower’s account of government corruption in Kenya. [...]

Leaving Basra to the bandits

As the Royal Navy concluded their training mission last week, it marked the official end of the British military operations in Iraq. The task of training Iraq’s nascent navy is crucial due to the strategic importance of the southern oil ports and the 90 percent of Iraqi revenues that comes from selling crude. When the [...]

Obama’s Speech: The Elephant in the room

President Obama’s speech on Thursday at the State Department was neither groundbreaking nor surprising. Despite the rhetoric from both Secretary of State Clinton who spoke briefly before the President about a “bold new approach” in US foreign policy, and Obama himself who bespeaks a “new chapter in American diplomacy”, the realities on the ground tell [...]