When heads (and secretaries) of state get by with a little help from officious friends

In April 2011, as Libyans were in the thick of their uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, a Frenchman in a white shirt unbuttoned to reveal swathes of chest arrived in Benghazi to hold yet another meeting with opposition leaders.

A new brute takes over Palmyra’s notorious Tadmur Prison

Situated in Palmyra, near some of the world’s most beautiful ancient ruins, Syria’s notorious Tadmur Prison has fallen from one brutal boss to another.

Al Qaeda wins this round against Daesh, but what’s with the rival claims?

Al Qaeda’s most dangerous branch, AQAP, has claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack, edging arch jihadist foe Daesh (IS) for the moment. So why were there rivals claims in the Paris two hostage crises?

Lessons from the Peshawar army school attack

The year that saw Malala Yousafzai win the Nobel Peace Prize is drawing to a close with a horrific attack on schoolchildren in Peshawar. So much for our dreams of a world where kids can go to school without fear.

A Tale of Two Indias

Two stories emerged from India this week. One was the case of two Indian women in New York from two contrasting backgrounds being treated very differently in the media. But there’s just one issue in all thess dichotomies...

Malala’s got mail from the Taliban, but what in the world does it mean?

A Pakistani Taliban commander’s letter to Malala Yousafzai is a sort of madcap Islamist version of William Hazlitt’s “On the conduct of life, or advice to a school-boy”.

Riding the ‘talking to the Taliban’ train, with the brakes jammed

The “talking to the Taliban” policy was doomed to fail from the start. But it has seeped into the international agenda by osmosis and although the boat is sinking, it’s now too late to desert the ship.

Gimme Headley: NSA offers a bad example of effective US surveillance

What was NSA director Keith Alexander thinking when he brought up the case of the one brown-eyed, one green-eyed Pakistani-American, David Headley, as an example of how controversial surveillance programs can thwart terror attacks among friends?

Fathers, sons and brothers: Boston suspects and the Toulouse attacker

The Tsarnaev brothers and Mohamed Merah - the Frenchman of Algerian descent who went on a deadly rampage in Toulouse last year – had very different origins. But their trajectories share distressing similarities.

Egypt’s Jon Stewart ‘insults’ Pakistan, ‘cools’ Qatari relations: The show goes on…

Egyptian prosecutors are probing new complaints against TV satirist Bassem Youssef for “insulting Pakistan” just days after some critics warned that his skit lampooning Qatar would affect Egyptian-Qatari relations.