Very few things about the political state of Iraq can accurately be described as clear. But now that the flag has been cased and the last 4,000 US troops are on the way home, some sort of preliminary balance sheet is finally possible.
As president Obama told the troops at the military base in Fort Bragg this week, the country the US military leaves behind almost nine years after the invasion is ‘not a perfect place’. If reports of continuing sectarian violence are anything to go by, that is a considerable understatement. Continue reading
Osama Bin Laden’s killing is a huge symbolic victory for the US, but just that – symbolic. Al Qaeda always was, and remains, a quintessentially decentralised organisation and over the last decade Bin Laden has never been able to sustain any significant organisational capability because of the risk of electronic detection. To that extent his death will make little difference to the network as a whole which will continue to operate irrespective of whoever replaces him, whether his Egyptian deputy or another, but certainly no-one with the same charisma or mythical status. What has driven al Qaeda is not its figurehead symbol, but the message he promulgated which resonated across the Muslim world. Ironically it is that message which is now being answered, not by violent Islamic jihad, but by another outburst that Bin Laden could never has foreseen. 
Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria, rumblings in Morocco and Algeria (and eventually Saudi?) even spreading south into sub-Saharan Africa such as Uganda, but the centre of this upturning of the old despotic order is Palestine. The tectonic shift in the latter has been little noticed, but is more momentous than any of the others. Palestine for half a century has been in thrall to US-Israeli domination, but without riots in the streets or even a new intafada that is now changing dramatically. Even hardened cynics were shocked at how far the Palestinian negotiators accommodated the ever-increasing and ever more humiuliating Israeli demands. But a new page is now opening, the most hopeful for decades. 
The royal wedding is not a state occasion, or so it was claimed to justify the non-inclusion of
Two organisations today came out against military intervention in Libya, perhaps indicating that opinion amongst Labour MPs is not representative of the Labour movement as a whole. Unite, the biggest union in the UK, has today called for a halt to the air attacks on Libya and an immediate ceasefire, saying that the intervention is a mistake and will provoke a lengthened civil conflict. In addition, Welsh Labour Grassroots which – uniquely amongst the British nations and regions — covers the Left spectrum from Compass and the traditional Left through to the LRC also opposes military intervention and disagrees with the support given to it by the Labour front bench.