World

Abdul Khaliq Farahi was Afghanistan’s Consul General to Pakistan in 2008, when he was kidnapped in Peshawar. He had already been chosen for promotion to ambassador, and was just weeks away from taking up his new post. The kidnappers were insurgents from both Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they were not directly affiliated to or controlled … Read more

The murder of Boris Nemtsov was Vladimir Putin’s fault. There is absolutely no doubt about that, at least not in the minds of the editors of the mainstream media. The first reports I heard on the shooting were on Radio 4, and they were repeated evry half hour or hour through the day. They unfailingly … Read more

The victory of Syriza in the Greek elections on 25 January show the willingness of the working class to stand up to vicious attacks by the ruling class on their living standards and hard-won rights. Syriza is vaunted as “radical leftics”, “communist” or even “Marxist” in the right-wing press. They are none of the above. … Read more

When I read accounts of mass killings, like the attack on the military school in Peshwar on 16 December, I experience horror and disgust. The accounts remind me of watching documentaries about England in the 17th century. I remember recently watching one of those dramatised documentaries in which a royal female (I forget who) had … Read more

One of the most common words used in reporting on events in the Middle East is “radicalisation”. And in the UK the current media furore centres on a debate about what to do with “radicals” returning from the Iraq/Syria conflict. The fear is that these “radicalised” people will pose a threat to security in this … Read more