The Top Ten Underreported News Stories of 2017

The Top Ten Underreported News Stories of 2017

We’ve reached half-time in what has been a very eventful year. It’s revealing to compare the stories that have made the headlines in the western media in the first six months of 2017, with those that haven’t. There’s been saturation coverage of alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election — and Russian state “hacking” in general — even though…

Pakistan Army to the GCC: No Longer Your Gun for Hire

Pakistan Army to the GCC: No Longer Your Gun for Hire

Less than a year into his role, Pakistan’s new army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, sets a fresh course for the country’s defence diplomacy in the Middle East. News that Pakistan chief of army staff General Raheel Sharif was taking over the newly formed, Saudi-instigated, Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) – nicknamed the…

Narendra Modi’s Version of Non-Alignment is Fooling No One and is Bad for India

Narendra Modi’s Version of Non-Alignment is Fooling No One and is Bad for India

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks he is exploiting opportunities but increasingly it is the non-opportunities that are exploiting him and his country. The Cold War is long over, Russia and China are allies and the United States has given up trying to play Beijing against Moscow. Tragically, Yugoslavia is no more, ‘Nasserist’ Egypt is…

In Cairo, the Pot Boils

In Cairo, the Pot Boils

On the anniversary of the military coup which brought Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to power, Egyptians are bursting with anger at his regime. Here are three ways this could boil over. “Sisi has failed himself and Egypt,” Bahey Eldin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, told me last night, the eve of the…