New York- I’m pleased to share that my fieldwork in Iraq from the war against IS circa 2016-17 is cited in a new book called Death, Dominance, and State-Building by MIT professor Roger D. Petersen published this month by Oxford…
New York- I appear in this week’s episode of Real Dictators by Noiser Podcasts and hosted by Paul McGann about the latter period of Colonel Gaddafi’s rule. Here he rather pragmatically relinquishes his once cherished pariah status on the world…
New York- I appear in this week’s episode of Real Dictators produced by Bristol-based Noiser Podcasts discussing Colonel Gaddafi’s use of international terrorism as a weapon of an asymmetric foreign policy. The episode also looks into his pivot away from…
New York-I’m featured in this week’s episode of Real Dictators by Noiser Podcasts which delves into Gaddafi’s early forays into international terrorism and becoming a pariah on the world stage. During this period in the 1970s, the sheen has long…
New York- I make an appearance in this week’s episode of Real Dictators by Noiser Podcasts talking about the early years of Gaddafi’s rule as the post-monarchical Libyan petro-state begins to take shape. The podcast delves into Gaddafi’s evolution from…
New York- I have a contribution in this week’s episode of the Real Dictators series by Noiser Podcasts. It explores Captain-cum-Colonel Gaddafi’s early years as becomes deeply influenced by the pan-Arabism that was echoing out of Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad…
New York-A piece came out in the New York Times Business section titled “An Arrest in Canada Casts a Shadow on a New York Times Star, and The Times” after I spoke Ben Smith, the paper’s media columnist and former…
Pai- Recently, I discovered via Twitter that a man I briefly knew in Syria some two years ago was killed, and killed quite some time ago. I was doing frontline analysis for Jane’s Intelligence Review that resulted in my piece…
Pai- Seeing the news about the coordinated attacks in southwestern and eastern Sri Lanka has me back to thinking about the weeks I’ve just spent traveling the whole length of the once war-torn Indian Ocean island nation. It’s been a…
Jaffna- In Libya, the 75-year-old General Khalifa Haftar who leads the Libyan National Army (LNA) is back in the news cycle this week in a big way. Reportedly backed by the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in terms of war…
Qamishlo/Erbil-Working in Syria is never a facile effort unless perhaps one brings many thousands of dollars/euros/pounds to insulate themselves from as many genuine interactions with Syrians as conceivable. I think I sometimes revel in the adversity. The Byzantium of offices…
Deir ez-Zor- I’ve spent so much of my adult life trying to unpack the intricacies of men fighting in societies other than my own. I make it my business to wade deep into the waters of armed conflicts that I…
Deir ez-Zor- I spent the weekend conducting field research in the eponymous district of Syria’s war ravaged eastern governorate to see what was going on beyond the headlines. I saw the press convoy leaving the temporary dormitory on the grounds…
Duhok- I’ve arrived in this damp, green mountainous city in northern Iraq as part of my ongoing journey toward the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. After a few days getting with Erbil and the Sorani Kurdish & Iraqi…
Aleppo Governorate- I spent a month working in northern Syria earlier this year. It was at once immensely trying and thrilling. Frustrating lack of access followed by huge breakthroughs. Working in such a fluid, semi-governed place runs an entire gamut of…
Erbil- Today marks fifteen years since the disastrous Anglo-American invasion of the Republic of Iraq. Eighteen months after the American intervention in the Afghan civil war became internationalised in response to 9/11, the next phase of what I refer to as…