Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Alastair Sloan
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Military intervention to protect the Rohingya still isn’t on the Western agenda
A key UN body has ruled that genocide was committed recently by the Burmese military. The atrocities, widely reported at the time, were against the Rohingya people, an ethnic group of Muslims living in Rakhine province, on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. Despite there being two million Muslims living in Britain,...
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Saudi Arabia really should listen to Human Rights Watch to improve its reputation
It is sometimes hard to see why the war in Syria gets so much coverage in Britain, while the war in Yemen is all but ignored; it feels like a niche topic restricted to hard-core Middle East watchers. In reality, though, events in Yemen strike at the heart of...
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What Elon Musk doesn’t get about Saudi Arabia
Step on to any plane heading to Riyadh tomorrow and you will rub shoulders with returning Saudi families, pilgrims, oilmen and a new swell of eager Western consultants, clutching their ex-McKinsey CVs and frequent flyer cards. Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s plan to wean itself off oil, may not be...
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Bin Salman’s attack on Canada is destroying Saudi’s economy
The Canada-Saudi spat looks set to accelerate as the Kingdom’s central bank ordered its fund managers to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in equities, bonds and cash from Canadian financial markets yesterday. The Wall Street Journal quickly judged that “the relatively small selloff isn’t expected to carry a...
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How the Gulf crisis is destabilising Somalia
The impact of the anti-Qatar embargo continues to have strange consequences beyond the Gulf. Somalia is increasingly compromised by its schizophrenic approach to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE on the one hand, and Qatar on the other, exacerbated by a fragile federal system in which constitutional responsibilities for...
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Russia split GCC: Next NATO and EU
As the world focuses on Vladimir Putin’s attempts to break up the EU and NATO, overlooking how he has already done the same with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is done at our peril. On 11 July 2017, Yuri Barmin of the Moscow-based Russian International Affairs Council, a propagandist think...
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An ally of the UK, Bahrain is practicing collective punishment unabated
The start of July has been a day-by-day microcosm of the struggles of Bahraini activists against one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Only thanks to the reporting of London-based activist and exile, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, is the world able to hear these kind of stories. But...
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The far right thrives on Europe’s indifference to Muslim refugees
The connection between Europe’s reticence about taking-in refugees and the dramatic rise in Islamophobia since the early 2000s cannot be decoupled. Were these refugees not largely from Muslim backgrounds, it is hard to see that there would be such reluctance for Europe to stand up for its values and...
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We need to address the UAE’s appalling human rights record
The United Arab Emirates has succeeded in one of the most brilliant reputation-laundering operations of modern times. Nearly all of the outrage mustered by Western liberals, leftists and hard-working human rights activists has landed at the door of Riyadh or Manama, and even the UAE’s current arch-enemy, Qatar. Meanwhile,...
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Why is the UAE’s Bin Zayed so close to Europe’s Islamophobes?
As Islamophobia rises across Europe, one Muslim world leader seems to be totally indifferent to the phenomenon. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Shaikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, is a personal friend of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić. Bosnian Muslims have never been impressed by Vučić; they remember...
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It’s time to pay more attention to Europe’s role in torture
When a Polish MP first announced that mysterious planes were landing in the night in a forest, eyebrows were raised, eyeballs swung upwards, and some MPs even broke out laughing. This was the stuff of conspiracy theories. What the MP had actually uncovered was Poland’s participation in the CIA...
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Iran has had a good run, but it looks like its luck has changed
Has Iran reached its peak? It increasingly feels that way. Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, through the war in Syria since 2012, and with the lifting of sanctions in 2015, Tehran’s star has been ever rising. Now, though, the country’s leadership faces a crisis. Donald Trump has decided...
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With Pompeo and Bolton at Trump’s side, the wise men have left the room
Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Donald Trump are the American triumvirate who have just passed judgement on the survival of the Iran nuclear deal. There could not be three men less suited to the job. According to Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on his trip to Washington to try...
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How Vladimir Putin weaponised the Iraq dodgy dossier
When he first came to power the world leader Vladimir Putin most admired was Tony Blair. This fact is little known, rarely acknowledged, and frankly scary. In fact, Blair was the very first foreign premier to visit Russia after he took power. Putin was still misleading the world that...
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Don’t be fooled – Trump still loves Putin and Assad
As Iraqi regular and irregular forces gathered on the edges of Mosul in spring 2016, flanked by Kurds and assisted quietly by Special Forces from several Western countries, Donald Trump was furious. He thought that the Pentagon was giving the game away. “Why can’t they do it quietly?” he...
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What the Islamic State got right — and very wrong
Ignore the theological failings of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi for a moment, and the enormous degree of violence and bigotry that his group practiced. It is time to give the Islamic State some credit. It kept its short-lived “caliphate” spotless. So clean, in fact, that residents in Mosul are reportedly...
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Britain’s Prevent programme is a good idea gone bad, and it was the state that ruined it
In April 2016, a UN official wrote to the British government expressing the international organisation’s thanks for hosting Maina Kiai. The former Kenyan human rights activist was the special rapporteur on freedom of association. Having visited three years previously, Kiai acknowledged that, “It is clear that the UK takes...
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Other countries have pulled back from the war in Yemen; why hasn’t Britain?
As the church bells rang in the New Year of 2018, Norway announced that it would be cutting arms sales to any country fighting in Yemen. A couple of weeks later, Germany said the same thing. The Netherlands and Sweden have also pulled out. Very early on in hostilities,...
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With Trump’s man now in charge of foreign policy, anything is possible
The appointment of Mike Pompeo as the new US Secretary of State by Donald Trump will not signal a change in Washington’s Middle East policy. It doesn’t mean that America will no longer endorse the alliance between the Saudi and Israeli governments. Nor does it, despite Donald Trump’s admiration,...
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Britain’s relationships in the Gulf are difficult, so caution must be the watchword
It was a tale of two protests. The first was on Monday, when pro-democracy demonstrators braved a blizzard outside the Bahrain Embassy in London to salute the arrest and continued detention of Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja. They intend to continue these protests every month. The second was held yesterday, when a...
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Investment in Iraq smacks of exploitation; regional big-hitters should open their coffers
Eighty per cent of Iraq’s immediate humanitarian needs have been met by Iraqis themselves, as they seek to rebuild vast swathes of the country post-Daesh. The push for the other twenty per cent has resulted in an international fund-raising round by Haider Al-Abadi, but it is faltering. The Iraqi...
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Listen carefully Mr Netanyahu: real statesmen don’t need props
Benjamin Netanyahu is at it again, waving props around to prove that Israel is under threat from Iran. This time it was the wreckage of an Iranian drone, wafted above his head at the Munich Security Conference. The Israeli Prime Minister carried on about the threat that we all...
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Britain’s collective memory should look beyond Europe to understand the Middle East
Exactly a hundred years ago, a famine which had been growing slowly across Iran suddenly hit the whole country. The disaster would go on to claim anywhere between a million and ten million lives, depending on which estimate you accept. The general consensus is that the eventual figure was...
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Netanyahu must recognise Polish suffering in the Holocaust
As a new row erupts over a proposed law in Poland criminalising use of the term “Polish death camps,” the Israeli Prime Minister has naturally weighed in. Netanyahu has every right to do so, given the history of his nation. He is now in talks directly with the Polish...
