Syria

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Points of view | 28 February 2019

Is it me or are we now faced (or perhaps I should say fazed?) much more often by stories in the news that test our moral and ethical principles to the limit, forcing us to question ourselves and what we think to such an extent that it becomes impossible to be sure of what is right? I can never understand the high-minded righteousness and full-blown convictions of the panellists on Radio 4’s Moral Maze, who each week are given a topical issue and who then spend 45 minutes tossing it about, testing the pros and cons and questioning a group of often baffled witnesses who are invited on to the

Friday

David Bergman

Bangladesh doesn’t want Shamima Begum. Here’s why it might have to take her

Whatever the arguments over the Government’s decision to revoke Isis bride Shamima Begum’s British citizenship, the teenager’s future now depends on one thing: will the courts determine she is a dual national who is eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship? If so, Sajid Javid’s decision is lawful, as this means that the loss of her British citizenship will not leave her stateless. But what does Bangladesh make of this row? The view from Dhaka has been clear: we don’t want her. In a statement issued this week, the country’s foreign ministry said: “The government of Bangladesh is deeply concerned that she has been erroneously identified as a holder of dual citizenship shared with

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh

Isis bride Shamima Begum should be allowed home

So, what do you reckon then about the jihadi bride, Shamima Begum, unearthed by the Times’ Anthony Loyd in a refugee camp in Syria? Should she be brought back home for an NHS delivery for her imminent baby – with the cops hovering backstage – or left to stew in a Syrian refugee camp, to give birth in the same conditions as other mothers-to-be? I may be misjudging my readers here, but I fancy I can discern which way most of us would want to go. But the first thing to say about all this is that this wretched 19-year old is about the least important aspect of the Isis

Thursday

Daisy Dunn

Hunter, scholar, boaster, dreamer

The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul, to ward off evil. The mighty lamassu to the right of the Nergal Gate had been on guard for some 2,700 years when Isis vandals took a drill to it in 2015 and blew away its face. Today a copy, crafted out of date syrup cans, stands on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. It wears the oblong beard and proud look of the Assyrian kings. The original sculpture dated to the time of Sennacherib, who ruled Assyria from 705 to 681 BC, and transformed Nineveh into a magnificent metropolis.

Thursday

James Delingpole

Bad blood

‘How did this mild-mannered eye doctor end up killing hundreds of thousands of people?’ someone wondered about Bashar al-Assad in BBC2’s extraordinary three-part documentary A Dangerous Dynasty: House of Assad (BBC2, Saturday). It’s a question we’ve all occasionally pondered as the Syrian body count rose — 500,000 thus far — and as six million refugees fled the country. The answer is so lurid and complex that it could have come from one of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Chinless, studious, polite Bashar was never meant to become president of Syria. His thuggish military officer father Hafez, who seized power in 1970, had earmarked the job for his dashing equestrian soldier son Bassel. But

Thursday

Peter Oborne

Syria Notebook

In order to avoid the Labour conference and yet more predictable media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, I escaped late last month to Syria, where children were returning to school after the summer holidays. Large tracts of the country have recently been liberated from the control of jihadi groups, meaning that in some places children are going back to school for the first time in five years. At Sinjar elementary school in Idlib province, I found the local headmaster painting the school sign. Five years ago rebels gave him the choice of closing down or being killed. He was confined to his house while the school buildings were converted into an arsenal.

Thursday

Paul Wood

‘People don’t care which weapon kills them’

 Beirut ‘The planes have already hit the hospitals’, said an aid worker. ‘They always do that first’ The customs man wore a white linen suit. He had a large moustache. His ample belly touched the edge of his desk. The scent of cardamom wafted over as a tiny cup of coffee was placed in front of him. I was not offered one. This was Beirut airport in the summer of 2011. We were travelling on to Syria, next door, where a civil war was beginning. The customs man lazily flicked through my passport and took another sip of coffee. ‘Everything will be seized,’ he announced with satisfaction. Television cameras, satellite

Thursday

John R. Bradley

The rehabilitation of Assad

Amid the confusion and the almost deafening cries of treachery and collusion over Donald Trump’s relations with Russia, few noticed the most tangible outcome of this week’s Helsinki summit. In the lead-up to his face-to-face talk with Vladimir Putin, senior US and Russian diplomats — in close coordination with leaders from mutual ally Israel — brokered a deal among all the warring parties (bar the Islamist terrorists) finally to end the devastating seven-year Syrian civil war. As is often the case with Trump, the hype tends to drown out the message but it was there for anyone paying close enough attention. The US, Russians and Israelis have agreed on a

Thursday

Owen Matthews

Putin’s rot

This is Putin’s time. Next week, the Fifa World Cup kicks off in Moscow, and the Kremlin has spared no expense to showcase Vladimir Putin’s new Russia as a vibrant, safe and strong nation. Half a million visitors will be welcomed — with the Russian press reporting that the notorious ‘Ultra’ hooligans have been officially warned to behave themselves or face the full wrath of the state. Despite four years of rock-bottom oil prices, Putin has nonetheless found the cash to build or refurbish a dozen new stadiums. Moscow has undergone a two-year city-wide facelift that has left it looking cleaner, fresher and more prosperous than any European capital I

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

What drama

One sphere that podcasts have so far not much penetrated is drama. Audible.co.uk is itching to develop its own brand but so far has limited itself to producing audiobooks read by a galaxy of stars. Recording plays is expensive, requires an understanding of studio techniques and a cast of actors who have learnt how to play to the microphone, not an auditorium. Only the BBC has as yet the necessary experience and resources, with its own repertory company and team of spot-effects experts and sound designers. We can only hope that stunts like The Biggest Weekend — the BBC’s attempt to put on a Glastonbury experience for the masses, with

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 19 April 2018

Home Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, apologised in Parliament for the treatment of immigrants from the Commonwealth from before 1971, known as the ‘Windrush generation’ (after the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought West Indian workers to England in 1948). The 1971 Immigration Act allowed Commonwealth citizens then living in the United Kingdom indefinite leave to remain, but the Home Office kept no records of these. Some had lost their jobs, others had been refused National Health Service treatment, and others threatened with deportation. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, apologised to Caribbean heads of government who were in London for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. A teenager was stabbed

Peter Oborne

We have a moral duty to mistrust the government on Syria

Almost two years have passed since Sir John Chilcot produced his 12-volume report on the lessons of the Iraq war. We collectively promised to learn the lessons. Last weekend it was as if the Chilcot report never happened. Britain, cheered on by a bellicose press and a largely docile Parliament, launched airstrikes that showed the same disregard for due process against which Chilcot warned. Remember what Chilcot told us: ‘The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction – WMD – were presented with a certainty that was not justified.’ He concluded: ‘the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May now has authority for further military action

Aside from the need to act swiftly and with an element of surprise when striking Syria’s chemical weapons capability, it is still fair to say that Number 10’s preferred option was not to have a vote before the strikes took place at the weekend. David Cameron’s experience in 2013 of failing to get parliamentary consent for action has left institutional bruising which means everyone is now cautious of asking MPs for approval, despite the fact that the Commons has in fact consented to air strikes both in Syria and Iraq since that failed vote. Parliamentary recess did make it much more convenient to avoid such a vote, and there was

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Windrush, Syria and the miserable state of British politics

What a dismal week this has been for British politics. And it is still only Wednesday. The distinguishing feature of this political moment is its shabbiness. The two stories dominating the news this week, Windrush and Syria, each demonstrate as much.  The Windrush scandal – it ceased being a saga some time ago – is shameful. But it is not simply a question of Home Office incompetence (some of which is only, when dealing with matters of significant complexity, to be expected) but, worse, one of Home Office vindictiveness. It is a feature of the system, not a bug within it. A system which, quite deliberately, excises humanity and common

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Whips struggle with emergency debate on Syria

This afternoon’s emergency debate on Syria isn’t quite working out as anyone had really planned. For Labour, it was an opportunity to undermine the government by complaining about the lack of parliamentary consent for the weekend strikes on the Assad regime’s chemical weapons capability. For the Tories, it was an opportunity to show that there was still strong support across the House for that action. Some MPs may even have come along to debate the principles in question; namely the balance of powers between executive and legislature. Jeremy Corbyn certainly tried to pitch it thus when he spoke, arguing that what the Prime Minister had done was anti-democratic: ‘It seems

Monday

Isabel Hardman

How Theresa May could make future decisions on military action a little easier

Though Theresa May, still responding to questions from MPs in the Commons on the weekend strikes in Syria, seems to have won support from a clear majority of MPs, her session has not been entirely comfortable. A large number of backbench Labour MPs made clear that they agreed with the Prime Minister’s assessment that the chemical attack in Douma had been launched by the Assad regime, but they also expressed disappointment that there had not been a vote in Parliament beforehand. Lib Dem leader Vince Cable agreed with this, as did the SNP. But one striking intervention came from Ken Clarke, who asked May to consider setting up a cross-party

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Theresa May explains herself to parliament

Theresa May came to the House today to explain why the UK joined in the strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons facilities and why she had not consulted the House first. May argued, rightly, that there was no prospect of getting UN authorisation for action because Russia would simply veto anything that affected its client regime in Damascus. She also pointed out that if the democratic world had failed to act against Assad following these attacks, we would be slipping back to a time when the use of chemical weapons was regarded as normal. But, perhaps, the most controversial part of her statement was on why she had not consulted parliament

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Jeremy Corbyn’s rationale for opposing the Syria strike is collapsing

The Syria missile strike has been backed by the governments of Germany, Canada, New Zealand and more – but not Jeremy Corbyn. Not for him the convention of the Opposition leader supporting the government in issues of war and peace. ‘I say to the Prime Minister: where is the legal case for this?’ he told Andrew Marr this morning. The legal case has been published here, at some length. Corbyn then suggested that international OPCW inspectors should be called in to judge what had happened. But is there any doubt about what happened? Today, the Sunday Times publishes testimonies of victims of the gas attack: accounts of differing people corroborate the

Saturday

Stephen Daisley

Jeremy Corbyn will never give war a chance

The best that can be said for Jeremy Corbyn’s response to air strikes against the Assad regime is that he is at least consistent. Why did he assert that the smart cuff meted out last night risked ‘escalating further… an already devastating conflict’? Because in Corbyn’s worldview, it is the felling of chemical weapons factories, not the extermination of children with the chemical weapons those factories produce, that escalates conflict. Why did he echo Syrian state media in questioning the legality of military action? Because Corbyn is a cynic who calculates that feigning concern for the global rules-based order — something he believes in only intermittently — is useful for stalling, deflection and water-muddying.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Podcast: Will last night’s Syria strikes make any difference?

The attack on Syria is now over, says the Pentagon – so where does this leave us? Last time 55 missiles were fired on the airbase from which Assad launched chemical weapons attacks. It was back in use days later, with jets flying off to bomb the same rebels. The United Nations estimated that Assad went on to deploy four more chemical attacks, and that he’s carried out more than 30 (its graphic below). This is why Theresa May was overstating it in her press conference this morning, saying that the international ban on chemical weapons need to be upheld. It has not been upheld: the Syria conflict has established