Syria
How Syria collapsed
In April 2018 I was taken on a coach through miles of war-wasted urban landscape in the Syrian cities of…
Espionage dominates the best recent crime fiction
Owen Matthews concludes his magnificent KGB trilogy, and there’s a thrilling debut from David McCloskey, a former CIA Middle East specialist
Who cares about Syria’s earthquake victims?
At 4 a.m. on Monday, when the earthquake hit, most of the 4.5 million people living in northwestern Syria were…
The agony and frustration of reporting from the Middle East
For 25 years, Abed Takkoush assisted foreign reporters like Jeremy Bowen when they arrived to cover the chaos and conflicts…
China’s Belt and Road to Damascus
There is, it seems, no regime too odious to be a partner of China. Being repressive and corrupt have long…
A Damascene moment in London: Imad’s Syrian Kitchen reviewed
Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is an eyrie off Carnaby Street, a once-famous road which seems to exist nowadays to sell trainers…
Looks lovely if nothing else: Craig and Bruno's Great British Road Trips reviewed
To its huge credit, ITV has managed to find perhaps the last two television celebrities who’ve never before been filmed…
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://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Paul_Wood.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
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…
