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
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...]
How I fell in love with Syria
January 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment
I remember the day I fell in love with Syria. We had got up early to watch dawn rise over the ruins of Palmyra in the desert, and as I sat on a piece of ancient wall, feeling the warm of the sun on my face, I saw a figure approaching out of the desert. It was a little like that scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Omar Sharif shimmers out of the mirage on a camel, except this was a small boy and he was on foot, but he was dressed in full Arab robes, headscarf and all. There was no sound except the … [Read more...]
Dead Sri Lankans don’t count
March 25, 2012 by 25 Comments
What is it about Sri Lanka? Footage emerges which appears to show that Sri Lankan soldiers summarily executed a 12-year-old boy then filmed his corpse as a trophy. A cabinet minister threatens to "break the limbs" of journalists and human rights activists, and claims responsibility for the savage beating of a journalist who fled the country in 2009. And yet the tourists keep on flocking to Sri Lanka's beaches. The England cricket team is back in town, ready to play another series. … [Read more...]
