When I went to meet the Yazidis, the “devil-worshippers” of Iraq, I thought I had found a strange and improbable oasis of peace in that ravaged land. I remember the Yazidis were so amazed to be visited by a journalist from another country that they took photographs ofme. Though they were surrounded by the mayhem and violence of Iraq, their villages in the shadow of the Sinjar mountains seemed an echo of an older Iraq. Children played in the fields, and the men chuckled as they told me how … [Read more...]
Meeting the Yazidis: an Encounter with the “Devil-Worshippers” of Iraq
August 8, 2014 by Leave a Comment
It’s Still About The Oil
June 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The Iraq war was always about oil. The ISIS extremists who are trying to seize control of the country’s largest refinery know that. Everyone was braced for the battle for Baghdad. But first they went after the oil. Just like the Americans. In 2003, when Baghdad was a chaos of looting, the one thing the Americans secured was the Oil Ministry. Because oil is power. If all you’ve got is a cave on a mountain side somewhere in Afghanistan, you have to do something really big to … [Read more...]
There Are Worse Things Than Dictators
June 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Everything they told you about Syria was wrong. The story where the noble, brave resistance were fighting to liberate their country. The story where Assad was the one the world had to worry about. Well, those resistance fighters have shown their faces now. And they are the butchers of ISIS, beheading their way through Iraq towards Baghdad. Syria and Iraq are the same war. They have been for a long time. ISIS is fighting in both countries, it wants to establish a single Taliban-style state … [Read more...]
First We Took Afghanistan. Then We Gave Them Iraq
June 16, 2014 by 3 Comments
First we took away Al-Qaeda’s base in Afghanistan. Then we gave them a new one in Iraq. Strip away the treachery and deceit, murder and mayhem of the last twelve and a half years, and that’s all that remains. In 2001, we went to war to chase Al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan. I was there. I watched the bombs fall, and I saw the bodies. Al-Qaeda were holed up in the poorest country on earth. They practically had to run their global jihad out of a cave. They were out on the fringes, cut off … [Read more...]
The Syrian Civil War – Made in Britain and the USA
April 14, 2014 by 1 Comment
We started this. That's what I can't help thinking every time I hear about the latest death and suffering in Syria. When the US and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003, we set off a chain of events that led inexorably to the killing fields of Damascus and Aleppo. I watched it begin when I was working as a reporter in Iraq. I remember going to an interview at a hospital south of Baghdad: the moment I stepped into his office, the doctor told me "You have to get out of here. They're … [Read more...]
The Burden of the Desert
February 6, 2014 by 2 Comments
NEW EDITION OUT NOW "This tense, thought-provoking and extraordinary book is an absolute must" Daily Mail The new edition of The Burden of the Desert, published by Short Books, is available now in all good bookshops Zoe Temple, a young British journalist who dreams of being a war correspondent... Lieutenant Rick Benes, an American officer trying to get his platoon home alive... Adel, an Iraqi, who wants revenge for the death of his father... Mahmoud, an Iraqi … [Read more...]
The Return of Al-Qaeda: why we should be worried about jailbreaks in Pakistan and Iraq
July 30, 2013 by 1 Comment
So, just over a week since the Al-Qaeda Jailbreak in Iraq, now we have the Taliban Jailbreak in Pakistan. It doesn't take much to tell that this was no coincidence. No, what it means is that, far from being a spent and broken force, the Al-Qaeda movement founded by Osama bin Laden is alive and dangerous. Eight days after spectacular raids by militants on two prisons in Iraq freed 500 inmates, among them some of the most dangerous Sunni extremists from the civil war, comes a remarkably … [Read more...]
Apocalypse UK: Warmwave of Death
July 17, 2013 by 2 Comments
There are times in life when you feel you must have been born in the wrong place. It's happening to me this week in London. All around me people are shaking their heads and sighing, declaring that it's "sweltering", "baking", "too hot to breathe", that they are "dying from the heat", that they can't sleep at night. The government has issued a Level Three Heatwave Alert. MPs are calling for people to be given time off work because of the devastating heat. And the temperature? A mild and pleasant … [Read more...]
The Quiet Heroes of the Iraq War
March 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment
At the end of the week that the world marked the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, it's worth pausing to remember the quiet heroes of the occupation. I wish I had got to know Marla Ruzicka. I used to see her in the Al-Hamra Hotel in Baghdad, organising some party or other, charming everyone she met, setting a table of journalists laughing by the pool. She would smile as she passed -- she had a smile for everyone, even a bad-tempered correspondent like me, fighting with his editor … [Read more...]
Why the Iraq war failed: the Hospital from Hell
March 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
If you want to know why the American occupation of Iraq was such a disaster, you need look no further than the story of the former Saddam Hussein Central Children's Hospital in Baghdad. When I first saw the hospital in 2004, it was beyond belief. There was sewage dripping from the roof of the premature babies' ward, leaking from pipes above, spattering down to the floor between the cots, where it gathered in foul stinking puddles. Downstairs in the leukaemia ward, the toilets had … [Read more...]
