By Marcus Halaby Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn condemned prime minister Theresa May for her silence on Yemen prior to her recent visit to Saudi Arabia, pointing to the UK government’s “complicity in the Yemeni people’s suffering”. He has called for an end to the Saudi naval and air blockade of Yemen, which began on 6 […]

Major political events in Lebanon’s politics rarely take place without the intervention of external powers.

PRESIDENT DONALD Trump’s 20 May visit to Saudi Arabia, for a summit of the six Gulf Arab states and 49 other Arab and Muslim-majority countries

ON 8 OCTOBER, two bombs dropped by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen hit a funeral hall in the capital Sana’a while it was packed with mourners, killing more than 140 people and wounding about 500 more. Saudi officials at first denied that the airstrike ever took place, only later accepting responsibility while claiming it was […]

By Marcus Halaby For all David Cameron’s boasting that he has 70,000 “moderate” Syrian oppositionists ready to act as boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS, there is precious little sign of them being brought into action. It now seems that they will only be usable after a “political process” has engineered a […]

Marcus Halaby investigates Saudi Arabia’s role in the rise of ISIS Our rulers routinely present the beheadings of hostages carried out by the Islamic State (IS) as proof of their need to send their military forces into a region whose past experience of Western bombing, invasion and occupation created the very forces that they are […]