Somalia
Africa’s lessons for Ukraine
Kenya During Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 I got a close look at Moscow’s troops and their kit. These…
When it comes to Africa, the media look away
Kenya Each time I sit in St Bride’s on Fleet Street during the memorial of another friend, I look around…
With tourists absent, the teeming marine life has returned to the sea off Malindi
Malindi, Kenya Beneath the Indian Ocean’s surface, I wondered if the pandemic had turned out to be a good thing…
Nazis and Nordics: the latest crime fiction reviewed
Social historians of the future may look back at the reading habits of this era and conclude that we were…
My time in Somalia with Michael Meacher, Tony Benn’s ‘vicar on earth’
East Africa The late Michael Meacher represented almost everything I loathe in a politician. Before his death in 2015,…
Rod Liddle: Labour’s putting me on trial for thought crime
I got an email this week, from a chap called Harry, which began as follows: ‘I am writing to inform you…
Radio comedy still misses Kenneth Williams
It’s tempting to believe that somewhere in the bowels of Broadcasting House in London the voice of Kenneth Williams is…
An innocent abroad defies South Africa’s insane colour code
At the eye of apartheid South Africa’s storm of insanities was a mania for categorisation. Everything belonged in its place,…
Justin Marozzi’s diary: Lunch with Saddam’s hangman, and a democratic revolution in Kensington
Lunch with the man who hanged Saddam. My irrepressible old Baghdad friend Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Ealing neurologist turned Iraqi national security…
Portrait of the week
Home Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative foreign secretary, resigned as chairman of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee and promised…
I want to do for field rations what Jamie Oliver did for school dinners
Hell’s Kitchen My ambition to open a fish and chip shop in Mogadishu has not happened yet, though I remain…
Could the Kenyan mall atrocities happen here?
So you’ve just popped down to the supermarket for the weekly shop, toddlers in tow, when the grenades start to…
Italy is killing refugees with kindness
Italy’s decriminalising of illegal immigration has acted as a green light to boat people, and the journey is a deadly one
Hunted in Mogadishu by the Sick Man and the Jilbab
From a way off, as he entered the café, he looked young and handsome but when he sat down there…
Aidan Hartley: How Muslim militants and Western jihadis wrecked enchanting Somalia
Wizards inland from the little Somali port of Barawe bewitched a person to come to them by banging a nail…
Al-Qa'eda targeted Kenya not because it's a banana republic, but because it's a symbol of African success
If Al-Shabaab was behind the terrorist attack in Nairobi, then the group has come a long way since its foundation…
