The UK’s commander in Helmand, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, has said that we shouldn’t expect a decisive military victory in Afghanistan; I wholeheartedly agree. He should have added that there was never going to be a military victory in Afghanistan.
Setting up the Afghan government was never going to be enough, either. The international community needs to [...]

The 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia. Sochi is 34km from the border with Abkhazia, one of the breakaway provinces of Georgia. Here’s a map of the area; Sochi is in the north-west/top-left corner.

Read into it what you will; however, it seems likely that there will be problems. Czech Foreign Minister Karel [...]

A little while ago, I wrote a post here and on the Wardman Wire called ‘Help Zimbabwe from your chair’.
Lovemore Matombo and Wellington Chibebe, respectively the President and General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions (ZCTU), were being charged with ’spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the state’. Those falsehoods are, in fact, criticisms they [...]

Like many young people, Mehdi Kazemi came from Iran to study English in London in 2005. While here, he discovered that his boyfriend, back in Iran, had been charged with sodomy and hanged. He applied for asylum but was refused, although the Home Secretary agreed to review his case. He has now been granted asylum [...]

The Times has published the top fifty countries from Jane’s list of stable and prosperous countries. The top eight are, in order with their populations in brackets, the Vatican (800), Sweden (9.1m), Luxembourg (480,000), Monaco (33,000), Gibraltar (29,000), San Marino (30,000), Liechtenstein (34,000) and the UK (60.5m). If Sweden is included, those countries are less [...]

I wrote here about the risks of drawing comparison between al-Qaeda and the IRA. An article arguing something similar from Henry McDonald is on the Guardian politics blog; I recommend reading it.
xD.

Jonathan Powell has indicated that we should talk to al-Qaeda, making a comparison with Northern Ireland.
In Ireland, it was fairly straightforward, if not to identify, to delimit the people who controlled the IRA. The brass was known and there were contacts throughout the eighties between the governments of both sides of the Irish Sea and [...]

Viktor Bout has finally been not only caught but arrested. There is plenty of background on Viktor Bout - probably the world’s leading arms trafficker - on the Yorkshire Ranter’s blog. According to the UN, he has illegally shipped arms to Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Congo-Brazzaville, [...]

Prince Harry (or Cornet-2/Lt Wales or possibly Widow-Six-Seven, depending on who you ask) has fulfilled his wish to fight for his grandmother and country. It would seem that this was a sop to him for not resign his commission because he hadn’t been allowed to fight in the manner he had been trained - commander [...]

The BBC World Service turned seventy-five yesterday. It started broadcasting on 19th December, 1932, as the Empire Service. Since then, the world has changed greatly, but the World Service continues broadcasting; part of its Imperial legacy remains with the periodic declarations in RP that ‘This Is London’ so you’d better pay attention.
I started listening to [...]