Syria

‘I want a woman to be President,’ declared one of the ambulance drivers interviewed by Sherief Elkatsha for his film Cairo Drive. I don’t think he was joking. He was fed up with the struggle to do his job in the chaos of the Egyptian capital’s streets clogged by 14 million vehicles. Elkatsha’s feature documentary took five years to make and takes us from 2009 through the Tahrir Square uprising up to the most recent elections purely through looking at the traffic, the lifeblood of the city. He set out to give us voices, not tell a political story, and this lies behind many of the films shown in last

Yesterday I argued that if it became clear that the Russian plane was brought down over Egypt by a bomb, Vladamir Putin may be forced to reassess his Syrian campaign – especially in light of a strong counterattack by Islamic State on the ground in Syria. Today, as the bomb theory became the only plausible explanation for the catastrophe, the Kremlin is strongly hinting that such a radical reassessment is already underway. Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, has today said on a Russian radio station it is no longer ‘crucial’ that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stay in power. ‘Absolutely not, we’ve never said that,’ she insisted when pressed, adding

It now seems fairly likely that an explosion brought down the Russian passenger airline over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula over the weekend. One Metrojet official has already suggested that the ‘only explainable cause is physical impact on the aircraft’ and they have ruled out technical failure or human error. If the ongoing investigation proves that to be the case, it will obviously have an immediate and catastrophic impact on Egypt’s already decimated tourism industry. A jihadist would have been able to infiltrate one of the country’s supposedly most secure airports to plant a sizeable explosive device on a specific airline. PR disasters do not come much worse than that – and just one

For many years, Australia has been turning away boats filled with migrants. From a remove, this looks cold–hearted — a nation built by immigrants showing no compassion for others who want a better life. But it is precisely because Australia is an immigrant nation that it understands the situation: if you let the boats land, more people come. People traffickers will be encouraged, migrants will be swindled, and their bodies will wash up on your shores. Any country serious about immigration needs a more effective and robust approach. Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister of Australia, made that point clearly this week on a trip to London. Delivering the Margaret

Over the weekend an Israeli-Arab flew from his home in the Jewish state on a paraglider, evading Israel’s formidable air defences to land smack bang in the middle of the Golan Heights. Despite a search by the IDF so intense it provoked a flurry of tweets stating that an Israeli invasion of Syria was underway, he disappeared. No doubt he was hidden by one or other of the assorted jihadist groups based there, predominant among whom is the Al-Qaeda offshoot Al-Nusra Front. They long since booted out the UN peace-keeping mission in the No-Man’s Land part of the territory and, to the delight of binocular-wielding day-trippers, have for the past

Nicola Sturgeon is to close the SNP annual conference today, and her aides have leaked what she proposes to say about UK military intervention in Syria. I hope there’s time for her to change the text because, as it stands, it’s muddled and rather embarrassing – it suggests that she does not understand the situation at all. Unilateral air strikes, she is due to say, will merely add to the “already unimaginable human suffering” in the region. She will vaguely urge a diplomatic push at the UN to help bring the four-year civil war to an end (Isis, meet Mr Assad. Now, please shake hands). Of course now that Russia has established a de

The United States has abandoned training rebel forces on the ground in Syria but not equipping them, or at least some of them, and over the weekend its military cargo planes dropped 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups in the north of the country. All apparently reached their intended target: yet another hastily formed alliance intent on fighting both the Islamic State and the Assad regime. Alas, despite being created just days ago, in keeping with Syrian rebels‘ almost constantly shifting alliances, it confusingly already has two names: the Democratic Forces of Syria and the Syrian Arab Coalition. The former includes both Arab groups and the Kurdish YPG militia. However,

It is too early, as the Kremlin admits, to assess how effective Russia‘s week-long military assault on the Islamic State in Syria has been. However, one thing is already crystal clear: Moscow is winning the propaganda war. While Barack Obama was apologising today for the disgraceful bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan, changing Washington’s official version of events for the fourth time in as many days, the Russian Defence Ministry provided an extraordinary sleek video of its cruise missile barrage of Isis targets. The accompanying press release explained how the 26 missiles not only avoided civilians when they hit their targets, but even flew over non-residential terrain for almost the entire 900 miles after