Pai- I’ve recently finished reading Ronan Farrow’s death of American diplomacy narrative War On Peace. I picked up the UK paperback edition at Kunokiniya Books at the Dubai Mall–meaning it had finally passed the UAE’s thought censors to be able…
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…
Kandy- For years I’ve wanted to visit this city in central Sri Lanka and its nearly mythical Sri Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic) where one of Siddhartha Gautama’s four canine teeth is stored for veneration by Buddhists…
Unawatuna- Today the SDF finally declared the total clearing of Baghouz and with it the last patch of formal IS territorial control anywhere in Syria and Iraq. So today signifies the conclusion of the al-Jazeera Storm campaign which was launched…